Rape? *spoiler*
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Archived from the IMDb Discussion Forums — The Piano Teacher
the_playboy_bunny69 — 18 years ago(April 14, 2007 12:34 PM)
I watched this movie a couple of weeks ago and although at times it was a difficult watch, i absolutely loved it. Isabelle Huppert is just mesmerising in it and has such a beautful face so i was pleased with the lengthy facial shots.
Anyway, there is something niggling at me, for i cant make my mind up about the 'rape' scene.
My very initial and instinctive reaction was that it was rape.End of.
I watched it again a few days later and changed my mind. Perhaps Walter was doing precisely as the letter requested of him. Perhaps he simply wanted to please Erika who in turn was playing their game.
I then bought the novel and again felt that he was raping her to punish her. She apologises to Walter for the letter and tells him to ignore it. She wanted them to have a "normal" version of love, one without pain as she realises it was not what she wanted or needed.She instead asks for "love and affection".
When Walter is raping her she wants to desire him as she "hopes" that she does infact love him, but ends up feeling nothing so asks him to stop as he is hurting her. Obviously he does not.
What confuses me though is the last scene at the Conservatory Erika is waiting for Walter, eager for him to acknowledge her but when he does so just for a bried second, she is clearly dejected and heartbroken. I understand and empathise with her need for love and to an extent have an idea of her mentality but I'm still not sure what happened!
It's really very frustrating.lol
I was just wondering if anybody else had any opinions or views on this.
Thanks
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kvetinka23 — 18 years ago(May 05, 2007 12:49 PM)
I think the interpretation you made after reading the book is closer to directors idea than the first one. But it is possible that it was a combination of motives of his acting like a revenge (this is what you wanted and here I am fullfilling your dreams!) and his own inability to understand her situation.
Walter is absolutely frustrated and upset about the fact how the whole relatinship went wrong just like Erika who unfortunately is not able to show any emotion the way she feels deep inside towards Walter and so he "finishes" with her like that.
In the evening of concert he is not showing anything else than formal respect of Erika as a professor (maybe with some irony included) and this makes her desperate because she knows she lost him forever. So hard for her because he was the only person to whom she dared to reveal her desperate need for love folded in perversion and lack of self-esteem. -
lacqua86-1 — 18 years ago(June 07, 2007 07:04 PM)
For me, the ending was definitely rape.
While the letter detailed what she wanted done, Walter threw all that out. He wasn't doing that FOR her. He was doing it for himself. Remember, he was frustrated by the letter because she was directing him, telling him what to do as a man. So he storms in to reclaim his position of power which the letter has taken away (remember he was shocked at himself that he was standing outsider her window masturbating).
I think part of the director's intentions, too, was to show the difference (or maybe not so much a difference) between ritualized violence like S&M and real violence. This puts the viewer in a strange position as well because we're watching "real" violence take place in a "fake" scenario (i.e. no actors were really harmed in the making of this film).
as for the ending, i just see Erika as a pot boiling over. she had to let the steam out somehow. -
chris_vienna_austria — 18 years ago(July 07, 2007 03:43 AM)
@lacqua86-1
I like your explanation. For me it was rape, it was'nt the kind of "consensual SM-violence" she was dreaming of. Walter lost the respect for her, and misused her.
I think she took the knife to the concert in order to take revenge on him.
But she couldn't find an oppurtunity to stab him, so she punished herself. -
lyndsay_lane — 14 years ago(November 01, 2011 09:52 PM)
You make a very good point. I agree with his intentions at the time, but I wouldn't call it rape simply because everything he did she told him she wanted. She even said "When I say no or stop keep going even worse". So she really opened the door for rape, or at least for rape to be an extremely gray area. I mean, that is the most confusing thing ever to anyone. If I were a guy receiving that letter, I wouldn't know what was right and wrong with her anymore, you know? He may have had a rapist mind set, but I don't think he believed he was committing rape. No woman is ever "asking for it" but she almost did.Do you think he would have done that had she not written the letter?
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lyndsay_lane — 14 years ago(November 11, 2011 10:17 PM)
That's why books are usually better than movies! They offer more insight. The actress did an amazing job portraying Erika, and I could tell she didn't want it, however I felt that her statements and actions prior could confuse Walter. I couldn't read his intentions well. Miscommunication is the perfect explanation for this. In the film, I kind of sympathized with Walter, which is exactly what you said was a big difference in the film, simply because she seemed to be playing so many games with him and her behavior was very confusing and he seemed to genuinely love her, or have an infatuation for her. But like you said, the book clarifies the actual intentions and motivations more than a film could do, no matter how great the actors or directors. Did you think the book was much better than the film? I am interested in reading it now. Your analysis of the book made a lot more sense than the movie. I don't think the movie was done poorly, it just left things somewhat unclear. I completely agree with what you said, and it really does make the film much clearer for me! Thank you.
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lyndsay_lane — 13 years ago(May 08, 2012 01:36 PM)
That makes sense. Movies have limited time to tell a book's story, so they are often forced to leave a lot of character development out. I would like to read the book because books usually provide a better glimpse into a character's life and mindset than the movies based on them. However, I don't know if I want to if the disturbing scenes are more graphic in the book. I'll try it. I'm sure any book I read is going to be more tame than the half of American Psycho I managed to get through. That was just disgusting.
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I_Created_U — 9 years ago(November 16, 2016 03:12 PM)
I've just finished the movie and think this is the most off base interpretation i've read until now. Completely wrong in my book anyway. I should add that i've never read anything upon the movie or director and that i have seen the movie only once. Here's my take:
So he storms in to reclaim his position of power which the letter has taken away
That letter didn't take his power away, it gave him
all the power
imaginable over another person. He storms into her place to precisely realize her fantasy according to the letter. He was masturbating under her window, he mistreated the mom, he locked her in, took the key, slapped her in the face even though she was begging, treated her like sh!t, everything in order to please her and respect her wishes. He even doesn't hit her when she screams "not on the hands!" when she was trying to free her mom.
The reason he was frustrated is because this role playing wasn't really his thing and he was forced to do the kind of stuff to a person that would have otherwise never occurred to him. He was distraught after reading the letter because he finally acknowledged that the woman he loves was a nut case.
He didn't "throw out" anything, i don't see how you can think that after having seen the movie. He is trying to respect her twisted wishes to the letter.
I think part of the director's intentions, too, was to show the difference (or maybe not so much a difference) between ritualized violence like S&M and real violence. This puts the viewer in a strange position as well because we're watching "real" violence take place in a "fake" scenario
That's wrong too in my view. That was not his aim and what we saw at the end in her flat was nothing
but
ritualized violence. As to why she suddenly stopped enjoying it mid act, i have no real explanation. I would hazard that the realization of her fantasy wasn't up to her expectations, maybe he wasn't hard/mean enough? Maybe the constant apologizing and talk put her out of it? I think she realized that the fantasy wasn't painful/humiliating enough which is why she went back to something more powerful i.e raw pain, which is why she stabs herself at the end of the movie.
At last, and this is probably the first time in my life that i say such a thing, but in this specific scene, in my humble opinion, it wasn't rape. How can it be rape when the person clearly told you several times that you can do whatever you want with her and that even if she begged, he shouldn't care the least and just keep going. She
literally
wrote him a letter
explicitly
detailing what she liked and how she liked it and how she wants to be treated. She shouted several times "I want what you want!" and wrote "Shove me my own stockings down the throat until i can't breathe" or something to that effect. It just can't be rape. It's the only time i have and probably will say this, but this was, as twisted and perverse as it looked, consensual sex. Every time in the movie when she asks him to stop, he did indeed stop. Every time. Why would he rape her this time? From his POV and mine, she was willing and if he had felt otherwise, he would have stopped.
Now am I saying that one can't rape a masochistic person in a role play? Not at all. What i am saying is that you can't rape a person when the rapist is respecting to the letter the instructions he has been given by the victim. If the sex happens outside the limits described by the letter or if the safe word has been used and the role player doesn't stop, then it's absolutely 100% rape and there's no excuse for it. However, if everything unfolds according to the plan and the plan
is
rape, then it simply can't be genuine rape but a game.
She jumping on her mom and looking at her pubes and kissing her was more rape than anything the guy ever did to her
People who don't like their beliefs being laughed at shouldn't have such funny beliefs -
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angel-white — 16 years ago(June 28, 2009 01:17 AM)
WARNING: SPOILERS
It wasn't rape. They should have established a "safe word" to verify this. When such people engage in such "deviant behaviour" they need a safe word, because no really doesn't mean no, at this point. All he was doing was interpreting her letter, IMO. He knew what she wanted, and if he scripted it, it would have been too fake, so he interpreted it. Then, what he did was actually less obscene than her letter, but because it wasn't directly word-for-word from the letter, it gets labeled as rape.
I think it's a little sad, and I couldn't have done what he did, myself, but if you haven't been there, I think it's hard to realize that what seems to be giving someone what they want is actually hurting them (like giving drugs to an addict).
I don't know what I would have done in his situation, but at the very least I woudl have established a safe word. But you should take note that several times he quoted her letter directly, and asked her to verify that his quote is what she said. Presumably, at any point, she could have clarified "that's not what I meant" but she did not, because she needed to be abused.
The abuse may have been a little different than she depicted, but that made it much more real, which is what she needed (wanted?). Whatever it was, I cannot with any conscience in me, conclude that it was rape. This was what she wanted, it was what she needed. It killed her (one of many possible interpretations of the ending), but it was her decision. -
mikpii — 18 years ago(September 07, 2007 10:25 AM)
Yes the scene of him trying to fulfill her fetishes turned into a rape. I think it was highly ironic because he had expressed his disgust at her sick mind and fantasies and then there he was raping her.
The author of the book said the story is about authoritarianism in Austria; then the irony makes perfect sense: authoritarians stigmatize people who don't conform to their ideology and yet they themselves make horrible things in the name of their ideology.