(☞ﾟ∀ﾟ)☞

“The Piano Teacher” features a professor Erika Kohut’s attempt to regain control of her life while living under her overbearing mother’s thumb through establishing a master/slave relationship with Walter Klemmer, her young suitor. After hearing responses of fascinated disgust from friends who have watched this film for their “Madness In Literature” module, I decided to watch it for myself out of a passion for dissecting perversion. The central psychological mystery of the film is the root of the titular piano teacher’s madness and while it may seem that the answer is evident in the sexualized acts the protagonist performs for her self-pleasure, I believe that the film’s progression of perversion is more than a shock tactic and instead serves to problematize the protagonist’s unnatural innocence.