The brilliant Isabelle Huppert gives the performance of her career as Erika Kahut, a distinguished professor and musician at the Vienna Conservatoire. Interested only in her work, Erika is cold and disdainful towards her students, humiliating them when she sees fit. At home, 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 Erika's 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 that reveal her devastating addiction to porn and self-mutilation. Set against a refined background of Rachmaninov, Schubert and Bach, director Michael Haneke's absolutely unflinching look at sexual sadism seems to jar even more.

Winner of the Cannes Grand Jury Prize in 2001, The Piano Teacher is a penetrating examination of one woman's battle with desire, desperation and self-denial that will leave you both shocked and numb.

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