Please note: This was screened in March 2017
Isabelle Huppert gave perhaps the performance of her career in Michael Haneke’s penetrating examination of one woman's battle with desire, desperation and self-denial that will leave you feeling both shocked and numb.
Erika Kahut (Huppert) is a distinguished professor and musician at the Vienna Conservatoire. Seemingly interested only in her work, she is cold and disdainful towards her students, humiliating them when she sees fit. At home however, it is Erika who is torturously bullied by her elderly interfering mother (Annie Girardot). It is only when Erika begins a strange affair with a young handsome student named Walter (Benot Magimel), that the true extent of her arid emotional state and deep-rooted sado-masochistic ways come to bare. Scripting their ‘sex’ via letters, Erika instructs Walter to beat her and subject her to a series of shocking rituals, revealing her devastating addiction to porn and self-mutilation. And set against a refined musical score of Rachmaninov, Schubert and Bach, this absolutely unflinching look at sexual sadism – like chamber music for a chamber of horrors - seems to jar even more.
In her severity, her mad anger and tragic fear of love, Huppert’s portrayal deservedly won her the award for Best Actress at Cannes in 2001. Cold, malign and profoundly disturbed, it remains one of her most compelling performances.