Film Fatale: The Piano Teacher and the Femcel Community
Words: Charlotte Amy Landrum
The Piano Teacher (2001) is being hailed as a femcel classic. The film, following Erika (Isabelle Huppert) in an entanglement of sexual desire, repression, and self-hate, is a rare portrayal of a woman who - although has talent, a respected place in her community, and good looks - just can’t seem to fit in. During our age of alienation, where online communities of girls are crafting personalities around being an unloveable void, Erika represents the pinnacle of femcel life: at home with mother, feeling incapable of developing a relationship and having an itch for escape that can never be scratched.
In all its bleakness, The Piano Teacher is a beautiful film. We may never have had Miu Miu F/W 23 if it weren't for Erika’s outfits. The costume design of modest and pristine button-ups and cardigans with knee-length pleated skirts and grey jumpers are the nail in the coffin for the film's popularity with any femcel-adjacent woman, or even a girl that is just a bit unnerving - a predecessor for the femcel archetype.
Isabelle Huppert wears these garments effortlessly, as she does the character of Erika, balancing frigidness and detached perversion in a way that is specific only to this film. As described in a review from the time of release in The New Yorker: “Much of her best acting is no more than a flicker of consciousness, barely visible around the edges of the mask. Yet she gives a classic account of repression and sexual hypocrisy.” Her restraint is portrayed at every moment of the film. Erika is a voyeur, attending peep shows amongst rowdy men, but she doesn’t seem to be experiencing stereotypical pleasure as she watches. Her expressions are motionless - her eyes do all the talking as they stare deep into the sex she watches, her mouth kept straight just like her posture. Her detachment is the centre point. It seems Erika is not necessarily seeking pleasure, but any kind of feeling - going to extremes to see if there is any life left within her.
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Similar to Erika, Huppert is a real-life pinnacle for all cold and detached women out there. Shown particularly in a Guardian interview in 2018, Huppert elucidates her guilty pleasure as: “Imagining myself as a sadistic and manipulative murderer, like something out of a book by Agatha Christie.” Similar to Isabelle Adjani or Anna Karina, Huppert's characters and real self blend into each other, leaving the audience with her distinct essence of being a disconcerting woman with incredible taste and a cold stare.
Erika’s repression and sexual hypocrisy are the heart of The Piano Teacher: Erika has sex, love, pleasure, and pain all mixed up. Although she doesn’t engage, she loves to look. Erika’s voyeurism flips the switch - one of the main components that makes this film stand out so much. From the classic Taxi Driver moment to An American Werewolf in London - the porno theatre is the second home for the on-screen male - so watching Erika dart through the crowd of confused men and straight into the peep show booth is enticing. There is no engagement on her part. She knows what she wants. There is not an eyelash batted or hair twirled as she walks past these gawking men, she doesn’t care. All she wants to do is look.
Life gets complicated for Erika when one of her students, Walter Klemmer, harbours an interest in his reserved teacher. After his persistence, Erika finally bites and engages in a sexual relationship. This all comes to a tragic crescendo as Walter cannot comprehend Erika’s perverted desires, and even more so cannot comprehend her direct nature when it comes to her own pleasure; Erika’s vulnerability and inexperience in relationships are abused by Walter.
“Physical pain is a universal currency of feeling, and Erika is an on-screen vessel for the women who have the unspoken struggle of not being able to feel.”
Jean Wyatt writes in Jouissance and Desire in Michael Haneke's “The Piano Teacher" that there is an “ironic juxtaposition of sound and image, of sublime music and images of pornographic or perverse sexuality deconstructs the discourse of high culture” in the film. Side by side, Erika is in the upper-middle-class world of pianists while, just behind a toilet door, she is mutilating herself, sneaking out to watch a porno and spying on couples having sex in their car at the movie drive-in. The film’s composition is laughing in the face of high culture: The simplicity of Erika’s actions, how easy it would be for a woman to do these acts, creeps into the viewer's mind. Walters's actions are also in the viewer's mind, even if his casual hatred, mockery, and abuse towards Erika are disturbing. If the pristine piano teacher can be a masochist and pervert, and the charming student a rapist, who else is lurking out there?
It is in this way that the work of the director Micheal Haneke deconstructs the Western family unit. He takes the middle-class dream and sits them next to an outsider evil. It is a cinematic version of a family who usually gets from place to place in their BMW having to take the night bus because their engine has given up. In Funny Games the Schober family is tormented physically and mentally by two sadistic boys, in Caché a Parisian family is surveilled outside their own home, and in Time of the Wolf a family is plunged into an apocalyptic setting after having their safehouse taken over. However, in The Piano Teacher, the evil is coming from inside its own community: the student, the mother, and the self. There is little need for an invasion from a twisted outsider to create violence in Erika’s life.
In one interview, Haneke expresses: “If you start exploring the concept of family in Western society you can’t avoid realising that the family is the origin of all conflicts.” He continues: “The cinema has tended to offer closure on such topics and to send people home rather comforted. My objective is to take away any consolation or self-satisfaction from the viewer.” The bleakness of Haneke’s films comes from the lack of hope, but for some, that is a comfort. Erika’s inability to connect to the world around her is finally a relatable portrayal. A distinctly female look at modern alienation and how sexual repression can manifest in hellish ways.
As The Piano Teacher ends, we watch Erika stab herself in the shoulder and walk out of the concert hall and into the streets after she watches Walter skip past her. The act seems like one last attempt to feel - but as we can see from her expression, the emptiness doesn't subside. Self-confessed femcel or functioning member of society, I think most women can see themselves in this moment. Blood blossoms through Erika’s blouse with no acknowledgement from passers by as she watches the boy who ravaged her home and body giggle his way into a red velvet chair. Physical pain is a universal currency of feeling, and Erika is an on-screen vessel for the women who have the unspoken struggle of not being able to feel.
