Why French?

I understand Isabelle Huppert is a goddess and her performance in this film is remarkable, but besides being able to cast her, why did Hanecke decide to make the Piano Teacher in French?
It doesn’t make any sense, the film takes place in Vienna, the characters are Austrian. Or maybe I should ask, why did he decide to shoot in Vienna?
Does anyone know?

Haneke was able to get better funding from France, which has a much more robust film industry than Austria. He would make several films there.

Haneke wanted to make Time of the Wolf in Austria after he finished Funny Games, but the funding fell through. Apparently Juliette Binoche called him out of the blue to ask him to come to France and make a film with her, so he went and made Code Unknown. Presumably, he made The Piano Teacher in French because it was easier to get financing if it was made in French.

Haneke:

“The book was published about 20 years ago. 15 years ago, I read it and was interested right away. I approached the author, Elfriede Jelinek, but she was not very interested, and she refused my offer to turn it into a screenplay. She wasn’t interested, because she herself was trying to turn it into a screenplay, and that screenplay was ultimately rejected. So, after another five years, which makes it 10 years ago now, a friend of mine, who is also a director, finally succeeded in convincing the author to let him have the rights. She agreed, and he asked me to write the script. This friend was trying to get the film financed for about 10 years, but did not succeed—it was always in turnaround and it just didn’t make it. Eventually the rights fell back to the producer, Veit Heiduschka, and then, realizing that with this other director he couldn’t pull it off, he asked me. I said yes I would do it, but only on the condition that Isabelle Huppert would play the lead role. That’s the whole story.”

Moderated

nip!

flagged.

seriously, if you’re gonna wear a Star of David necklace, try to look decent.

Not sure what just happened. What does moderated mean? I am new here…

But thanks Matt that explains a lot.
I am still not satisfied though. Why didn’t he just set the film in France, like he would do with Cache, instead of Vienna. Austrian characters speaking French, singing in German though,(with a thick French accent at that), just feels awkward.

What’s so remarkable about Huppert in “The Piano Teacher”?

Adequate maybe, but not remarkable. And really, when you dwell on it, she doesn’t do anything out of the ordinary.

The problem is when you praise every other performance as remarkable, it leaves no room for anything not remarkable to use as a comparitive device.

The scene with the tissue out of the rubbish bin and the way she looks at the screen zombie like is especially forced. I’m certain I don’t look like that when I’m viewing Daphne Rosen.

NOTE:

The above is a repost of the “moderated” post, sadly sans image.

RICH:

I think you’re the last person who ought to be flagging posts given your recent history. Not that I would’ve flagged your posts, and the fact Daphne Rosen refuses to remove the Star of David even when she’s doing a money shot makes her even more lovable. She’s kosher and proud, dude.

I don’t think there’s anything indecent about the above picture. It can be viewed by visiting the following link and people can decide for themselves.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ac/Daphne_Rosen_by_Mike_South_cropped.jpg

SPIRIT:

“Moderated” is another word for “censored”. Here in MUBI land, displays of graphic violence are a-okay. Pictures of near-naked chiseled men are just dandy. But for some reason, mammary glands (even covered) are totally offensive.

I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore, so I’m gonna come right out and say it:

Is MUBI moderated by a mixture of gay (or asexual?) misogynists who despise expressions of male heterosexuality and rampantly puritanical women who find healthy depictions of the female form disgraceful? Honestly, I, as a human being, am insulted that anyone could find the linked picture insulting.

Daphne Rosen is a highly intelligent and beautiful young woman who just so happens to make pornographic films for a living. I find that less offensive than politicians and generals who drop missiles on nameless villages in the Middle East for a salary.

Also, given the film in question—“The Piano Teacher”—contains an extremely graphic snippet culled from a hardcore pornographic movie, and people commenting on said motion picture in this thread have presumably seen it, it makes bowdlerisation of the image from my post all the more perplexing.

Finally, let me just say I found Michael Cranberry’s inclusion of pornography in his film more redundant than my affixed image of La Rosen—because the Kosher Queen is NEVER redundant!

Moderated

Elston, this might sound incredible, but I didn’t notice La Rosen’s nipples at first—her areolae aren’t very pronounced, and I thought for certain it would be considered a wholesome G-rated image. Then I noticed her areolae but figured I might as well go with it—I love the fact she has a peace symbol on her cleavage, plus Daphne looks oh so cute in the photograph.

“This leads me to believe that MUBI is moderated by image sensitive Protestants, who worship words above all else and find images blaphemous.”

HILARIOUS!

…because it’s most likely true!

Elston..no love for La Rosen?

She’s the Barbra Streisand of Pornography!

Maybe you prefer her with her natural hair colour…

@Mark: with all due respect, at the very least the pic you posted was off-topic and pointless, and the comment toward the mods is juvenile. I think you’ve been granted an awful lot of latitude, but your continual disruption of ongoing conversations with posting of this kind is disrespectful to other members. Let’s get back to the subject at hand, please.

@Spirit

-Why didn’t he just set the film in France, like he would do with Cache-

It’s a compromise, yes. My thought on this is that he viewed the characters and story as essentially Austrian in nature (much of Jelinek’s work certainly is), just as Cache is essentially French (and Algerian), but he wanted to work with Huppert and probably working in French with Huppert made it much easier to get the film financed.

Moderated

C’mon Elston—Mark’s incessant need to share the banalities of his tastes in porn with us (or you sharing yours) is “breaking down barriers?” The internet broke down that barrier a long time ago. I know you’re just trolling but, even so, surely you can do better than that.

Matt Parks:

Moi…juvenile? Not really: I think removing said image from the thread was juvenile.

Besides, NOTHING is banal about Daphe Rosen, the Barbra Streisand of Pornography.

Okay, you want to discuss “The Piano Teacher”, Matt? I’m still wondering what was so great about Isabelle Huppert’s “performance”. Nothing special in a movie that really tested my patience.

I don’t have an issue with the film being in French, despite taking place in Austria. It’s just the French version of an American film taking place in Germany, with the characters speaking English, to use just one example. I guess because I speak neither French nor German, it bothers me less. If the film is foreign language, I’m reading the subtitles anyway.

-Besides, NOTHING is banal about Daphe Rosen, the Barbra Streisand of Pornography.-

Yes, Mark, we all get that thanks to you referencing her numerous times. I think runcles flagged you post ironically, actually, but you’ll have to ask him.

-I’m still wondering what was so great about Isabelle Huppert’s “performance”.-

You mean what about it do people respond to? In a very general sense I think it’s that she plays a disturbed, paraphilic, occasional violent, etc. character and manages to find something human and sympathetic in her in a film that doesn’t have a lot of big, dramatic, “look-at-what-a-great-actor-I”-am-friendly scenes.

Matt I actually think it was pretty good trolling. Then again, are you a troll connoisseur? Do you have a keen eye for the troll aesthetic, and it’s general implementation? If not then I’m not sure you’re qualified to give your opinion. Certainly less so than the authority on independent trolling aka Bray Larney. (<—- okay this is sort of bad trolling)

^ fail.

Moderated

@Mark
-It’s just the French version of an American film taking place in Germany, with the characters speaking English, to use just one example.

I can’t think of a single American film set in Germany or any other foreign country for that matter, that doesn’t have a clear purpose for being set in that particular country, generally because it’s based on an historic event.

In the case of “The Piano Teacher” I still didn’t see a good enough reason. Matt’s view sounds convincing though, the whole aspect of elitism, classical music and piano skills being a representation of status, seems to be a very Viennese thing, although more so a Vienna of the past, Mozart’s Vienna.

I just brought it up because I was curious if any theories existed about this. Knowing Hanecke’s use of rather unusual ways to get his point across, like the shadow of the camera in Cache, I was wondering if anybody had an interpretation.

Other than you Mark, I speak German, and I was taken out of the film several times, for example when they hang up the sheet with the names of the students who were accepted, which is all in German. These moments felt very much like “Brechtian alienation”, something Hanecke seems to be quite fond of. But unlike Funny Games and Benny’s Video, where it made perfect sense, I couldn’t figure out why he would do it here. But maybe I am just too sensitve…

I think “The Piano Teacher” would’ve been more tolerable if Daphne Rosen played the lead.

I didn’t feel any sympathy for Huppert’s character. None. What a wicked old witch.

Of course you do (your first statement) and didn’t (Mark)—your fetishes are incompatable with the character’s. No harm in that.