143 posts categorized "Transgressive Cinema"

July 05, 2025

THE PIANO TECHER — THE CRITERION COLLECTION

 Jo JoWelcome!

Groupthink doesn't live here, critical thought does.

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ColeSmithey.comMichael Haneke skillfully adapts fellow Austrian, and Nobel Prize winner, Elfriede Jelinek's 1983 autobiographical novel into a deeply insightful film about the lasting results of physical and emotional trauma as explored through Isabelle Huppert's Erika Kohut character.

Erika only ever has trouble in mind. Familial exploitation has been a constant presence in her life. Her father died in a mental institution.

Elfriede Jelinek's transgressive narrative is set in Austria where an ongoing abusive relationship between Erika and her live-in mother (Annie Girardot) plays out in brutal fashion.

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Mother and daughter sleep in the same adjacent beds where the now absent father once slept, even though Erika has a room of her own.

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The mother destroys colorful clothing that Erika purchases but rarely if ever wears. The women engage in knock-down-drag-out fights that end in hugs and apologies.

Nothing functional, normal, or peaceful can exist in their fraught relationship.

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Her mother says, "That's just how we are. We're a hot-blooded family."

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Erika teaches classical piano in private lessons at the Viennese conservatory where she lords her thorough classical musical knowledge over her young students with cold hostility. Erika sternly follows her mother's command that she never allow any of her students to surpass her talent.

Equal parts sadist and masochist, Erika is a perv on the prowl. Her mastery of classical piano goes hand in hand with her extreme desire for sexual perversity.

One very telling scene, in which Erika instructs Walter at the piano, involves her pointing out all of the different musical notations that give breath, nuance, and complexity to the Classical piece at hand. With verbal cues Erika precisely guides Walter's fingertips via his intellect to exert the exact amount of pressure that she so deeply desires.

This is magnificent filmmaking on full display.

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Erika goes to peep shows where she smells, if not licks, cum-soaked tissues left behind by past male visitors. Erika frequents drive-in movies where she stalks young lovers having sex in cars that she squats beside to urinate while masturbating. Self-annihilation is her ultimate goal. Humiliation is a ritual.

Romantic love as a social construct doesn't exist, pain and humiliation must attend any sensual encounter.

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Erika is also a cutter.

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Enter Walter (Benoît Magimel), a clean-cut college engineering student with an innate talent for classical piano. Walter is drawn to Erika like a moth to flame. Little does Walter realize that he has set foot in a spider's web.

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Handsome, polite, intelligent, and articulate, Walter boxes outside his weight class with Erika by a good 20 years. Walter's simplistic idea of love is leagues away from Erika's desired sexual set pieces.

This is the romance Erika has been waiting for. However much Erika is able to handle Walter's immediate sexual needs, he cannot return the favor when it comes to Erika's perverse proclivities, however dirty, desperate, or exhibitionist they may be in practice.

ColeSmithey.com

"The Piano Teacher" is a stunning work of transgressive filmic art for its rigorous attention to the complex psychologies of its characters. Ego and id, desire and need, rules and anarchy, stupidity and intelligence, creation and destruction, all explode at once in a flash of willfully exposed degradation.

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Isabelle Huppert and Benoît Magimel deliver performances of a lifetime.

I know of no other movie that begins to capture the depth of emotional truths that Hanake's adaptation of Elfriede Jelinek's novel, affords the viewer.

Michael Hanake is the anti-Quentin Tarantino. Both filmmakers author their movies. "The Piano Teacher" is the only time that Haneke didn't write his own script.

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Michael Hanake views violence in movies as pornography. Rather, Hanake utilizes obscenity as a dramatic and satirical tool equally valuable to John Cassavetes's soul-bearing approach to characters and situations.

The sex that occurs in this film exerts an undeniable erotic power. Hanake allows human eroticism to exist in scenes that play out in real time. Their semi-public places add inherent suspense. Your guts get involved.

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A modern-day Pasolini, Michael Haneke rigorously attends to the molecules of narrative that enable vibrant drama to freely breed under his magnificent actors' attentive care.

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Although he is retired, Michael Haneke's films remain a beacon of hope in Cinema. Here is a true filmic poet with wisdom and insights that become crystal clear through his provocative and controversial films.

"The Piano Teacher" is one of Michael Haneke's greatest achievements. It is one of the few movies that dares to delve beneath the surface of BDSM psychology.

Rated R. 131 mins.

5 Stars

Cozy Cole

ColeSmithey.com

May 15, 2025

THE SURFER — CANNES 2024

 Jo JoWelcome!

Groupthink doesn't live here, critical thought does.

Punk heart still beating.

This ad-free website is dedicated to Agnès Varda and to Luis Buñuel.

Get cool rewards when you click on the button to pledge your support through Patreon.

Thanks a lot acorns!

Your kind generosity keeps the reviews coming!

Cheers!

ColeSmithey.com

 

ColeSmithey.comThe Nicolas Cage cottage industry of Cinema rolls on.

Halefuckinluya.

Cinema audiences can take deep satisfaction in knowing that Nicolas Cage is still around to carry a torch for their American entertainment dollar.

It means a lot.

And why hasn't Nicolas Cage ever been in a Quentin Tarantino movie?

Just sayin'. Anyway.

As a middle-aged dad returning to purchase his Australian childhood beach home, Cage's surfer suffers every indignation and humiliation imaginable at the hands of a cult of beach rats.

"Bay Boys" they call themselves.

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If only Lux Interior of The Cramps were along to tell these masculinity-chasing fools, "You ain't no Punk you punk."

If only.

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Cage's surfer dad has his ass publicly handed to him in front of his teenaged son. Not a good look.

Relative newcomer Thomas Martin's script masks most of its plot holes with an incisive sense of tribal/cult mentality. Think "Lord of the Flies."

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Social media gets a proper smack in a cell-phone incident that will make you squirm in your chair.

The script guilds the lily too much in regard to beach rat cult leader Scally (Julian McMahon), who Cage's character grew up around.

For a movie that takes place entirely in the location of an ocean front parking lot, "The Surfer" packs a significant punch.

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Ignoring plot holes is half of the fun. Nicolas Cage never gives less than 100% in his performances. Here, Cage takes one for the metaphorical group of men who get indoctrinated into cults, either by love-bombing or in this case, brutal physical and mental abuse.

ColeSmithey.com

"The Surfer" is a gnarly social satire that gives food for thought about any man's quest for peace and civility.

One takeaway from "The Surfer" is if you find yourself in a situation where you are being embarrassed, humiliated, or abused in any way, hit the exit quick and escape.

Rated R. 100 mins.

4 Stars

Cozy Cole

ColeSmithey.com

January 06, 2025

THE SUBSTANCE — CANNES 2024

Jo JoWelcome!

Groupthink doesn't live here, critical thought does.

Punk heart still beating.

This ad-free website is dedicated to Agnès Varda and to Luis Buñuel.

Get cool rewards when you click on the button to pledge your support through Patreon.

Thanks a lot acorns!

Your kind generosity keeps the reviews coming!

Cheers!

ColeSmithey.com

 

ColeSmithey.com

 

ColeSmithey.comIf you've seen Alain Robak's hilarious 1990 horror blitz "Baby Blood," then you'll have some inkling for the wonderful gnarly extremes that "The Substance" delivers to its well deserving audience.

Writer/director Coralie Fargeat creates the most satisfying horror satire to come along maybe ever.

David Cronenberg must be falling over himself with jealousy.

Fargeat deftly quotes from films by such directors as Alfred Hitchcock, David Lynch, Stanley Kubrick, Darren Aronofsky, David Cronenberg, and Brian DePalma.

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The Easter eggs just keep on coming. The special effects are amazing.

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Taking a cue from Oscar Wilde's "The Picture Of Dorian Gray," Coralie Fargeat crafts a diamond-sharp satire that cuts in all directions at once.

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Elisabeth (Demi Moore) is a wealthy L.A. television personality being pushed out of her job by corporate misogynist in-charge (Dennis Quaid).

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Science comes calling after Elisabeth miraculously survives a car crash that puts her in the dubious medical hands of a shadow pharma company peddling a black market drug kit. The works give the user the ability to create a younger version of themself that they then trade off living between for seven day increments.

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Margaret Qualley blows up the screen as Sue, Elisabeth's cunning younger, more beautiful, incarnation. Force of nature.

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Vanity, jealousy, money, and fame make for a toxic Molotov cocktail of bad decisions.

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Here is a whole lot of movie with some very poignant ideas about culture.

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"The Substance" explodes with wit, heart, soul, and a whole lot of blood and guts.

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What fun!

Rated R. 141 mins. 5 Stars

Cozy Cole

ColeSmithey.com

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