Studies in French Cinema Volume 6 Number 2 2006 Intellect Ltd Article. English language. doi: 10.1386/sfci.6.2.

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The masochistic fantasy made flesh: Michael Hanekes La Pianiste as melodrama

Catherine Wheatley University of Oxford Abstract
Since its release in 2001, Michael Hanekes La Pianiste has been the subject of conflicting responses and readings from various critical camps. Taking Robin Woods 2002 critical analysis of the film as its starting point, this article explores how the film might be read as a contemporary take on the melodrama, or womens film. The two focal points of Woods analysis the films reliance on a musical motif and its foregrounding of bourgeois society can be used to situate the film within a generic context. While Hanekes film aligns itself in many ways with the melodramatic tradition, the ultimate unspoken question of the film is not, however, the taboo subject of womens sexuality (Creed), nor the capitalist relations of production and class (Kleinhans) but the spectators relationship to modern society and to the cinematic apparatus.

Keywords
Michael Haneke Robin Wood La Pianiste melodrama womens film spectatorship

The narrative of La Pianiste seems unlikely material for a reading of the film as part of the melodramatic genre. Based on a novel by Elfriede Jelinek, La Pianiste/The Piano Teacher (2001) tells the story of Professor Erika Kohut (Isabelle Huppert), a distinguished pianist and Schubert scholar at the Vienna Conservatory. She is brilliant, demanding, unsmiling, and, we learn in the films opening scene, she lives at home with her elderly mother (Annie Girardot) with whom she has a volatile relationship. When Erika embarks on a relationship with a young student, Walter Klemmer (Benot Magimel), it transpires that her carefully constructed barriers hide a tormented sadomasochist, who will only agree to an affair with Walter on the condition that the only sex they ever have consists of a series of macabre rituals pre-scripted by Erika. Shocked and disgusted by Erikas demands, Walter rejects her emotionally, batters and rapes her superficially satisfying her desires leaving Erikas fate at the end of the film open to speculation. The films plot bears little obvious resemblance to the classic Hollywood melodramatic narratives. However, the films lead actress, Isabelle Huppert, has described the narrative as quite simple a very classical structure. You have three characters that you can easily identify with and you have a normal story (Cook 2001). The promotional description of the film taken from Artificial Eyes 2002 VHS release exemplifies how the films distributors, in many ways, have marketed it as a melodrama:
The Piano Teacher is a powerful and controversial new drama from Michael Haneke. Isabelle Huppert gives a performance of astounding emotional
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intensity as Erika Kohut, a repressed woman in her late thirties who teaches piano at the Vienna Conservatory and lives with her tyrannical mother, with who she has a volatile lovehate relationship. But when one of Erikas students, the handsome and assured Walter Klemmer, attempts to seduce her, the barriers that she has carefully erected around her claustrophobic world are shattered, unleashing a previously inhibited extreme desire.

Indeed, it would be perfectly possible, if a little misleading, to describe the film as the story of a repressed woman in her thirties who meets a handsome stranger and embarks upon an affair which will change her world. Such a description could just as easily be applied to All that Heaven Allows (Sirk, 1955) or Letter from an Unknown Woman (Max Ophuls, 1948). And like the melodramas of Sirk and Ophuls, Hanekes story takes place inside the closed world of middle-class society. In La Pianiste, this circumscribed universe is no longer the small town, but the world of Viennas musical elite: a closed world of private recitals and expensive piano lessons. This setting provides the backdrop to what Robin Wood, in his discussion of La Pianiste, Do I disgust you? Or, Tirez pas sur La Pianiste (Wood 2001), singles out as the films central preoccupations: its employment of a musical motif that finds its apotheosis in the foregrounding of Schuberts Winterreise; and its critique of contemporary bourgeois society. Woods article focuses on these two topics in relation to twentieth century sexual mores and social norms, and is dominated by a highly personal response to the films narrative content. Woods focal points converge with two of the dominant characteristics of melodramatic film one formal, one ideological. Growing out of the ballad format, melodrama was born as a genre with the emergence of the bourgeoisie as a propertied class, and traditionally, in ideological terms, took the form of an allegory for class conflict. Using this binary focus to frame a generic reading of La Pianiste, I demonstrate that Hanekes film incorporates a number of elements which film theory sees as contributing to and defining the melodrama, on the levels of plot, iconography and music, and that it does so deliberately in order to raise certain questions about society and spectatorship. It is the nature of these questions and the manner in which they directly concern the spectator that distinguishes Hanekes film from its generic context, and situates it as a distinctly modern melodrama.

Your silence speaks volumes: A melodic drama

Michael Haneke both draws on and updates the conventional look of the melodrama in his film: as in classic melodrama, iconography, setting and sound are all pivotal to the emotional tone of La Pianiste. The characters emotions are represented by their surrounding environment, giving rise to highly stylized mise-en-scne. But whereas in the films of Douglas Sirk, for example, the characters are lavishly dressed, the sets decadent and almost garish in their range of bright colours, the cinematic world that Haneke creates is, for the most part, one of minimalist modernism. The characters wear a palate of black, white, taupe and brown; sets are composed of clean, straight lines in similar shades. If Sirks use of colour was intended, as he claimed, to reflect the emotional turmoil of his characters, Haneke on the
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other hand uses lack of colour to point towards the disaffection that characterizes so much of modern society and portrays the dynamics of modern alienation. While Sirk uses deep-focus lenses to lend a deliberate harshness to objects, Haneke switches between long shot and close-up to depict the dialectic between alienation and claustrophobia. Similarly, Hanekes lighting, rather than bathing the heroine in a soft-focus halo and casting the antagonist in shadows, is stark, natural lighting which lends the bleak colours of his sets and characters a bleak and cold air. The stillness of his film, almost stagnant in its lack of movement, is the exact opposite of Sirks technique of only cutting away to movement, to indicate the whirligig of emotion his characters are on. Hanekes is an aesthetic of clinical precision. Shots are filmed, for the main part, from a fixed point of view, the cameras only movement a restricted and restrictive pan. His aesthetic reflects not hysterical excess, but extreme repression, carefully controlled and contained. Hanekes manipulation of classic melodramatic iconography extends to the films settings. For the majority of the film, Erika is inside: the flat she shares with her mother, the conservatory, the homes of her fellow musicians. When she does venture outside of this constrictive world (and even when outside, she is still always inside: a building, ice rink, cinema), she ventures into another world, where her sexual self can be unleashed. This focus on interiors reflects Erikas feeling of claustrophobia, and represents the emotional walls she has built around herself. This is the dcor of suffocation and entrapment: there is no escape from our families or ourselves. The director uses stock settings such as the family sitting room (the scene of a violent dispute between Erika and her mother), the bathroom (where Erika mutilates herself with a razor blade) and, perhaps most importantly, the staircase. In classic Hollywood melodrama, such as Sirks Imitation of Life (1959) or Written on the Wind (1956), the staircase is the scene of denouements, of the hysterical moment, as Geoffrey Nowell-Smith terms it, which marks the emotional climax of the film (Nowell-Smith 1987: 117). In Hanekes film it is a recurring image that seems to indicate the shifting power dynamics between the characters. At the beginning of the film we see Erika ascending in a lift as Walter chases up the stairs after her; at the films mid-point, when Haneke dangles before us the possibility that Erika will find her salvation in Walter, the two stand on two consecutive steps halfway up a staircase, which places them on an even footing, face to face; at the films end, a complete reversal of the characters original positions takes place, as Erika watches Walter ascend the conservatory staircase before she turns to run out and down the steps of the building. The rises and falls in the destinies of its characters, from the sublime to the ridiculous, seem in many ways to characterize melodrama, and to account for its emotional impact (and there can be no denying that La Pianiste has an emotional impact, however we might perceive it). In all melodramas, there is a system of visual and narrative punctuation in place, orchestrating the emotional ups and downs of the intrigue: the exaggerated rise and fall of human emotions. The earliest definition of melodrama was a dramatic narrative in which musical accompaniment marks emotional effects. In Hanekes film, the musicality of film takes on added weight, as Woods analysis notes, for this is a film about music and
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1. I am indebted here to Robin Wood for his detailed analysis of Winterreise, which discusses its themes and structure in great depth. 2. The director continues: Great music transcends suffering beyond specific causes. Die Winterreisse transcends misery even in the detailed description of misery (Sharrett 2004).

the significance of music in the life of the protagonist. If we look closely at the specific pieces of music that Haneke chooses for his film we gain some important insights into the nature of the characters and of the film itself.1 Erika is a specialist in Schubert and Schumann, and various of their pieces feature throughout the film. The former, whose sexuality remains questionable, died of syphilis, perhaps a testament to the dangers of promiscuity and sexual excess. The latter went insane, and died, like Erikas father, in an asylum. But, as Wood reveals in his study of the film, the most important piece of music in the film Schuberts Winterreise (words by William Muller) goes beyond themes of art, gender and looks at the wider concept of alienation that lies at the films heart.2 Its predominance is no accident. Indeed, the films very shape foregrounds the piece: rehearsals for a performance of the piece are an important part of the films structure, the opening credits are intercut with a pair of anonymous hands playing the piece, while the closing moments show Erika walking away from the auditorium in which she should at that very time be performing the piece. Wood explains that the song ostensibly consists of the young mans self-pitying outpourings upon being jilted by his fiance, but that the subtext concerns his descent into alienation. The pieces opening lines announce that the hero has become a stranger, or outsider, and that he will remain so henceforth; by the songs final verse, he identifies himself with a crazed organ grinder, who plays his instrument on the ice outside the village, where no one sees him and no one hears him. Haneke remarks on the use of the piece:
Of course, the 17th song holds a central place in the film, and could be viewed as the motto of Erika and the film itself. [T]here is a great sense of mourning in Schubert that is very much part of the milieu of the film. Someone with the tremendous problems borne by Erika may well project them onto an artist of Schuberts very complex sensibility.
(Sharrett 2004)

Just as Lisa, the female protagonist of Letter from an Unknown Woman, can only express herself through the written word, so Erika, by contrast, can only find her true voice that is, a pure expression of her abjection in her music. And yet, she is not even able to sing the words that so aptly express her loneliness and isolation, but must rather accompany the male singer. Perhaps this is a sign of her unwholeness, or of her not having entered the symbolic. For in her link with music, Erika is imbued with a purity that is lacking in language, but which separates her from the rest of the society in which she lives. Schuberts haunting, staccato notes make a much more apposite signature tune here than the soaring crescendos of the traditional melodramatic soundtrack.

The masochistic dream-fantasy and the Womans Film

Hanekes use of a female protagonist aligns La Pianiste with Barbara Creeds broad definition of the womans film (Creed 1977), and Erikas behaviour corresponds to Tanya Modleskis description of the melodramatic heroines typical comportments: hysteria, desire and muteness (Modleski 1984).
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The film creates a space for feminine psychology to take centre stage. Indeed, in some respects, La Pianiste seems like an introduction to the theories of Freud and Lacan, as is displayed with particular clarity in the relationship between Erika and her mother. In many ways, Erika remains a child, having failed to enter into the symbolic order. Her mother embodies the phallic Lacanian pre-Oedipal mother, simultaneously adored and feared by the child because of the childs dependence on her and closeness to her body. This emotional and physical proximity finds its visual equivalent in the image of Erika and her mother lying in bed together, side by side. Even though Erika is a fully grown woman and has her own bedroom, she sleeps with her mother every night. Erika, the child, at once adores the mother and fears her, misapprehending her as part of herself and fearing incorporation by her: the claustrophobic dcor of the mother and daughters home and tight, close-up framing of the exchanges that take place between the two women within it functions as a visual representation of this excessive closeness. At one point in the film Erika throws herself on her mother, an act that appears sexual but that has been described by Huppert as being about a little girl who wants to go back into her mothers stomach (Cook 2001). Erika lies to her mother, going to great lengths to escape her gaze and their claustrophobic relationship, represented iconographically by the tiny, cramped flat the two share, yet at the same time she fantasizes about a confrontation, about being caught by her mother. Hence the significance of the films opening scene, in which Erika returns late and her mother discovers the dress she has purchased, leading to a violent dispute and an emotional reconciliation.3 In many ways Erikas relationship with her lover, Walter, is an outlet for the conflicting feelings she has for her mother. The central relationship in this film, in terms of psychological exploration and narrative significance, is the motherdaughter relationship.4 Walter is a stereotyped dominant white male, subject to little character development or psychological exploration. Although his role is pivotal serving as the catalyst for the outburst of Erikas repressed desires he could potentially be replaced by any number of attractive, aggressive young men. When he reads Erikas letter, it transpires that in her eyes his only purpose is to facilitate the scenario she has imagined. The beatings, rape, torture all lead up to her ultimate fantasy: discovery by her mother. The male is thus relegated to supporting status within the films narrative. Despite the fact that Walter pursues Erika, it is her desires, her use of him, which dominate the relationship. Erikas own perspective is privileged at all times within the film. Although Hanekes style is very objective and remote eschewing point of view shots altogether we witness only events at which Erika is present; we see Walter, her mother, her pupils, only when she is with them. The audience is moreover aware of the nature of Erikas sexual desires long before Walter is, and so awaits her discovery of his reaction, rather than his discovery of her secret. While Walters status as the archetypal seductive, charming, male hero might lead some spectators to grab onto him as their primary identity figure, we are discouraged from this by the films critical aesthetic. This problematizes the issue of audience identification, since the films much closer relationship with Erika is nonetheless
The masochistic fantasy made flesh: Michael Hanekes La Pianiste as melodrama

3. For an extended psychoanalytic reading of La Pianiste see Champagne (2002). 4. This is more true in Jelineks novel than in Hanekes film. The director explains: In the film, the love affair, which is not so central to the novel, is more implicated in the mother-daughter relationship. Walter only triggers the catastrophe (Sharrett 2004).

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somewhat alienating to an audience, who find it hard to see themselves reflected in the cold, closed, sadomasochistic and even repellent figure of a woman who mutilates herself and others, visits peep shows, and spies on copulating couples. But the film draws on what we might call a traditional conceit of the womens film the inevitability of the heroines desires as unfulfillable in order to align our emotional responses with Erikas. To this extent, La Pianiste situates Erika within a long tradition of tragic heroines who function as ciphers for female masochism. As Susan Hayward puts it, masochism is everywhere within the melodrama, and this is certainly true of Hanekes film (Hayward 2000: 221). Erikas association with the masochistic extends far beyond psycho-semiotic readings of melodrama, for Hanekes film presents us with a literal playing out of the classical melodramatic conception of the female in film, taken to its logical and most powerful extreme as Erika reads her list of sexual demands to Walter, asking him to hit me, please, even with the back of your hand on my face. Ask me why I dont cry out for my mother, or why I dont fight back. Above all, things like that, so that I realize just how powerless I am. By foregrounding the masochistic drive that underpins the traditional melodramatic narrative in the womens film, the film effectively deconstructs it, troubling the generic standard that has female spectators finding pleasure in the sight of an ultimately frustrated feminine desire shown on screen. Erikas masochistic urges are certainly not a representation of a female desire recognizable to most spectators. The masochistic dream-fantasy (Fischer 1989: 101) is demythologized, revealed as the construct of a patriarchal society that seeks to subjugate women and reassert their role as martyrs to their roles as reproducers and nurturers. Erikas sadism towards her students constitutes a desperate attempt to occupy the male space of command. Translated into real terms, the soft-core emotional porn (Douglas 1980: 26) of melodrama becomes something altogether darker and more disturbing the hardcore masochism we associate with pornography proper. Hanekes film leads us thus to ask what it is that we really understand by masochism and who the real masochist is? Is it Erika, whose desire for brutality and violence from her lover corresponds to pornographic designations of the term masochism? Or Walter, whose desire for Erika, fuelled by her apparent unattainability, conforms to the traditional, literary and cinematic conception of masochism:
To love and to be loved, what joy! And yet how this splendour pales in comparison with the blissful torment of worshipping a woman who treats one as a plaything, of being the slave of a beautiful tyrant who mercilessly tramples one underfoot.
(Sacher-Masoch, quoted in Studlar 1988: 1819)

This conception of masochism, of chasing the woman (or man) who plays hard-to-get, and the simple pleasure of revelling in the excess of emotion that melodrama offers, (Williams 1991) are standard tropes of classic Hollywood cinema. Audiences flock to identify with characters who are in this sense as masochistic, if not more so, as any of the characters within

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Hanekes film. At the end of the film, Erika a monster figure to begin with is revealed to be as much victim as she is perpetrator. Her initial coldness pales in comparison to Walters cheery public greeting just hours after he has raped her. Why then are we so horrified by Erika, whose apparent self-confidence and restraint masks the magnified sadomasochism that is an inherent part of patriarchal society? For as Wood puts it:
The satisfactions of sado-masochism are, presumably, the sensation of power and the sensation of powerlessness, the satisfaction of punishing and the satisfaction of being punished. In other words, its all about power and domination, the very structures of capitalist culture, pervading and corrupting all relationships within it, from the family to the workplace, from parents/children to employers/employees, and then outwards to global politics. (Wood 2002: 2)

Do I disgust you?: society and the spectator

Although Wood does not explicitly approach the feminist concerns arising within La Pianiste, the above quotation underlines the way in which they can be seen as symptomatic of a broader condition of disaffection and alienation within society which he describes. Hanekes film could easily support a reading from a purely feminist perspective, but there is a notable shift in focus between Elfriede Jelineks novel, which examines womans own complicity in her subjection, and Hanekes film, which places this in the context of Western society in general. Wood views Erikas suffering as the encapsulation of contemporary society, asking whether any of us, living as we do in a still oppressive culture, disassociate ourselves from her cleanly? (Wood 2002: 3). Film theory is familiar with the dialectic between sexual politics and class politics, patriarchal order and bourgeois ideology. As Thomas Elsaesser points out, the forebear of cinematic melodrama, classic literary melodrama, makes clear the explicit external constraints and pressures which bear upon the characters, showing the quasi-totalitarian violence perpetrated by the agents of the system (Elsaesser 1987). Eighteenth century literary melodrama, such as Samuel Richardsons Clarissa (first published 1740) featured the ravishment of the female, pure, middle-class subject by a fiendish and controlling aristocrat as a standard trope, representing the conflicts between the rising middle classes and the remnants of a dominant feudal system. In such a way, the social was expressed through the personal; society as a whole reconstituted in the microcosm of the family. As these values became transposed to twentieth century America, the focus remained the home, the small town and the middle-class community, now threatened by the outsider. The conflict was often solved by a return to the same middle-class values: home, family and duty. Literary melodrama began as genre that had an ideological message, an agenda, perhaps even one that was somewhat subversive. But, as with all good genres, its appropriation by Hollywood left it ideologically askew. In a world where middle-class values were triumphant, rather than questioning the values of a tyrannical ruling class (the aristocracy), it substantiated

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5. Haneke situates his film in a Frenchspeaking Vienna, which lends the setting an air of both familiarity and strangeness, but most significantly forecloses any urge on the spectators part for dismissing La Pianistes events, and the character of Erika, as the product of a specific nation, rather than Western society in general.

them (as the bourgeoisie became the ruling class). Chuck Kleinhans, for example, proposes that fifties Hollywood melodrama functions as an articulation of the social relations of capitalist production class via the social relations of the capitalist/patriarchal reproduction the family (Kleinhans 1978). He argues that its function is similar to that of the family itself, perpetuating bourgeois ideology and patriarchy at the cost of repression and self-sacrifice. In these terms melodrama becomes a profoundly conservative form. Perhaps Hanekes film in fact restores the genre to its ideological roots. For we have come full circle: in La Pianiste, Haneke attacks the values of the bourgeois society who live in a world of apathy, snobbery and hypocrisy, and who condemn the very victims of the society they have created. Erikas story seems to echo the plight of the literary melodramatic heroine: as in Clarissa, the female protagonist is raped by the villain of higher social ranking, who, having tried to seduce her, resorts to the sexual assertion of masculine power; as in Tolstoys Anna Karenin (first published 1877), she is deserted by her lover and seemingly left to commit suicide, a resolution which Haneke hints at (but does not confirm) when we see Erika take the knife from the kitchen. In some ways, Walter is the descendant of Richardsons Lovelace: while perhaps less calculating than his predecessor, he nonetheless plays the role of the predator, and his encounter with Erika finishes with him subduing through sexual violence the woman who does not conform to his desires. Erika is a modern-day virgin who suffers in the midst of social snobbery and callous indifference. The very rape that asserts the ultimate dominance of the male over the female also highlights the dominance of spreading middle-class culture over the individual. As Woods analysis makes clear, La Pianiste can certainly be characterized as an address from one bourgeois to another bourgeois whose subject matter is the life of the bourgeoisie (Nowell-Smith 1987: 71). But, it is worth noting that the society Haneke critiques within his film is not a theoretical concept that the spectators (or theorists) can critically distance themselves from, for the aggressive self-reflexivity of La Pianiste situates spectators firmly within its circumference.5 Her question, Do I disgust you?, is not merely aimed at Walter, but also at the audience, and as Wood so presciently points out, if our answer is yes, then we must ask ourselves whether we too, are not disgusting (Wood 2002). The answer lies not with Haneke, but with his audience, as he explains: If you take the viewer seriously as your partner, the only thing that you can do is to put the questions strongly. In this case, maybe he will find some answer (Foundas 2001). It is imperative that we recognize not only that Erika is a product of contemporary society, but also that we contribute to and form part of that same society. Erika is not merely a masochist, but also a voyeur, and throughout the film the process of watching is foregrounded. The opening scene is bathed in the light of the flickering television and underpinned by its constant drone. Shortly after this scene, we see Erika visit a pornography booth, reflecting and reversing the viewing position of the cinematic audience in an inspired mise-en-scne, which allows her to appropriate a particularly male form of spectatorship. The pleasure she experiences in this scene can be read as somewhat passive, as Erika merely sniffs the tissues discarded by the men who have previously occupied the booth. In a later scene, however,
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in which she spies on a copulating couple at a drive-in movie, Erika urinates as she watches, an act which can possibly be interpreted as a form of female ejaculation. This scene, originally set in Viennas Prater Park in Jelineks novel constitutes the sole change in setting that Haneke makes to the original novel, and it is imperative in turning the audiences gaze back on itself. How can we be disgusted by Erikas voyeurism when we are participating in the very same act? As Wood points out, such reflexivity turns our attention to the question of what exactly is our part in creating a world in which a story such as Erikas is possible. Erika, who has evidently received little or no parental information about sex and love, is the product of a society where sex is either completely ignored, or else plastered in lurid details over television screens, posters and advertisements. She is torn between repression and excess. Her commitment to sadomasochism is complete and unquestioning, it is all she knows of love: alienated sex devoid of affection and tenderness, coupled with knowledge that all sex is wicked, disgusting and therefore must be punished. Faced with the possibility of real intercourse in the washroom, she can only fall back onto what she has learnt (Wood 2002: 5). Haneke (and Wood after him) puts the blame for this on us: men, women and society as a whole. Hanekes film is thus not ultimately concerned with an examination of patriarchal order, or of bourgeois ideology. Rather, he is interested in how both of these relations relate to the cinematic situation itself, as he explains:
If you start exploring the concept of family in Western society you cant avoid realizing that the family is the origin of all conflicts. I wanted to describe this in as detailed a way as I can, leaving to the viewer to draw conclusions. The cinema has tended to offer closure on such topics and to send people home rather comforted and pacified. My objective is to unsettle the viewer and to take away any consolation or self-satisfaction.
(Sharrett 2004: my emphasis)

As with all Hanekes works, the real protagonist is not on the screen but in the audience. The central factor that distinguishes Hanekes film then from those of Sirk or Ophuls is not its explicit sexual content nor its modern-day setting, but the ways in which the director draws on filmic conventions to trouble the spectators relationship to the genre of melodrama and to reveal what he perceives as its inherent duplicity: The genre film is, by definition, a lie. And a film is trying to be art, and therefore must try to deal with reality. It cannot do this by means of lies (Foundas 2001). What is interesting about Hanekes film is that while he claims that it is not a melodrama, but a parody of the melodrama (Foundas 2001), La Pianiste in fact functions in many ways as both an updating of the melodramatic genre for the disaffected society of the twenty-first century, and as a deconstruction of its implicit premises and positioning of the spectator. Capitalism, patriarchal society, the bourgeoisie and womens position within these systems are among the issues the film raises, but none of these issues constitutes its central focus. What Wood overlooks in his analysis of the film is the way in which Haneke self-consciously draws on generic codes in order
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not only to say something about society, but also about spectatorship. The structures of sadomasochistic pleasure that Wood sees as characterizing Western social relations are nowhere more in evidence than in the cinema: one need only refer to the vast body of theory devoted to the perverse pleasures of film for confirmation of this fact. It is clear from the opening scenes of Hanekes film that this work is very definitely a work of counter-cinema that sets out to challenge any assumptions that spectators may have about cinema and their role in relationship to it. In creating a genre film and one that looks back to the very earliest codes and conventions of melodrama Haneke implies that perhaps we have not progressed as far as we would have hoped, but that in our times the victims have become the tyrants, and our supposedly liberated society remains in many ways as oppressive, constricting and dangerous as it was two centuries ago. But more importantly Haneke simultaneously subverts the genre in such a way that we must throw off all of our preconceptions of melodrama, and anyone who may be lured in to see the film hoping for the emotional response elicited by classic melodrama is in for a surprise. And this dcalage between hope, expectation and reality is exactly what Haneke is aiming for when he claims that he is aiming to reveal the lie behind genre. As Lacan, or indeed any good melodramatic heroine could testify, what we wish for is rarely what we get, the fulfilment of desire we so hope for outside the cinema is almost always impossible. In fact the moral of all melodrama might be: Be careful what you wish for, it might come true. In All that Heaven Allows, Cary gets her man only once he has been incapacitated; in La Pianiste, Erikas dream turns out to be her nightmare. And, for the audience, La Pianiste is far from the tragic escapism we might seek on entering the cinema, but rather a terrifying journey through a world that is all too close to our own. As Laura Mulvey has written: Ideological contradiction is actually the overt mainspring and specific content of melodrama No ideology can ever pretend to totality (Mulvey 1987: 75). Especially not, as Haneke would have us see, our own. References
Champagne, J. (2002), Undoing Oedipus: Feminism and Michael Hanekes The Piano Teacher, www.brightlightsfilm.com/36/pianoteacher1.html Accessed November 2002. Cook, C. (2001), Interview: Isabelle Huppert, for the Regus London Film Festival, in conjunction with The Observer, http://film.guardian.co.uk/Print/0,3858, 429/ 640,00.html Accessed January 2003. Creed, B. (1977), The Position of Women in Hollywood Melodramas, Australian Journal of Screen Theory, 4, pp. 2731. Douglas, A. (1980), Soft-porn Culture, The New Republic, 30 August 1980, pp. 2529. Elsaesser, T. (1987), Tales of Sound and Fury: Observations on the Family Melodrama, in Gledhill, C. (ed.), Home is Where the Heart is: Studies in Melodrama and the Womans Film, London: BFI, 1987, pp. 4369. Fischer, L. (1989), Shot/Countershot: Film Tradition and Womans Cinema, London: BFI/Macmillan.

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Foundas, S. (2001), Interview: Michael Haneke, www.indiewire.com/film/interviews/ int_Haneke_Michael_011204.html Accessed November 2002. Gledhill, C. (ed.) (1987), Home is Where the Heart is: Studies in Melodrama and the Womans Film, London: BFI. Hayward, S. (2000), Cinema Studies: The Key Concepts, London: Routledge. Kleinhans, C. (1978), Notes on the Melodrama and the Family under Capitalism, Film Reader, 3, pp. 4047. Modleski, T. (1984), Time and Desire in the Womans film, Cinema Journal, 23: 3, pp. 1930. Mulvey, L. (1987), Notes on Sirk and Melodrama (updated), in Gledhill, C. (ed.), Home is Where the Heart Is: Studies in Melodrama and Womens Film, London: BFI, pp. 7582. Nowell-Smith, G. (1987), Minnelli and Melodrama, in Gledhill, C. (ed.), Home is Where the Heart Is: Studies in Melodrama and Womens Film, London: BFI, pp. 7074. Sharrett, C. (2004), The World That Is Known: Michael Haneke Interviewed, Kinoeye, 4: 1. http://www.kinoeye.org/04/01/interview01.php Accessed September 2005. Studlar, G. (1988), In The Realm of Pleasure: Von Sternberg, Dietrich and the Masochistic Aesthetic, New York: Columbia University. Williams, L. (1991), Film Bodies: Gender, Genre and Excess, Film Quarterly, 44: 4, pp. 212. Wood, R. (2002), Do I Disgust You? Or, Tirez pas sur La Pianiste, Filmhftet, 121(3). http://www.filmint.nu/pdf/english/121/doidisgustyou.pdf Accessed September 2005.

Suggested citation
Wheatley, C. (2006), The masochistic fantasy made flesh: Michael Hanekes La Pianiste as melodrama, Studies in French Cinema 6: 2, pp. 117127, doi: 10.1386/sfci.6.2.117/1

Contributor details
Catherine Wheatley is currently studying for a D.Phil. at St. Johns College, Oxford, for which her thesis title is Michael Hanekes Critical Aesthetic and the Ethics of Film Spectatorship. She has written articles on Michael Haneke and on film and ethics, as well as contributing several entries to the Routledge Encyclopedia of Documentary Film (3 vols., ed., Ian Aitken. New York and London: Routledge, 2006). Contact: Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages, St. Johns College, University of Oxford, Oxford, OX1 3HP, UK. E-mail: catherine.wheatley@sjc.ox.ac.uk

The masochistic fantasy made flesh: Michael Hanekes La Pianiste as melodrama

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