Over the weekend, I saw The Piano Teacher, originally released as La Pianiste, and I’m wondering if anyone else has seen it and would be interested in discussing it.
I came out of the theater sure of two things: one, this movie was going to take a while to digest, and two, it’s going to be a while before I want to see another girl/girl scene in a movie. 
I saw this at the Seattle International Film Festival a few months ago and, sad to say, didn’t especially care for it.
I understand there’s supposed to be a complicated allegorical underpinning for the film – aspects of the story represent the forces of socialism, or whatever – but I just plain didn’t see it.
Yes I saw the film and was very struck by it. It was one of those films where I was sure that there was more to it than I got, so I shall watch it again before coming to a firm conclusion. My local library has a copy of the source novel by Elfriede Jelinek so I’ll check that out as well.
And I don’t remember a girl-girl scene, though it’s always possible that the version we got in the UK was censored.
I’ll be reading Jelinek’s novel as well, Jabba, and I hope to glean insight from it. I’ve read several of the external reviews and user comments from IMDb (link in OP), and I think my initial take on the film is reasonable: Erika is a woman who has serious issues (the other two main characters seem to agree with me on this, no surprise), and I think the central interest of her character hinges on what exactly those issues are. Is she a garden variety submissive cloaking herself in over-compensated domination in her one area of skill, or is there something more at work.
Point of interest: why harm her student? Professional jealousy because Schubert is her “department”? Simple jealousy over the attention paid to the student by Walter? A derranged attempt to “save” the girl from the kind of life she has led herself?
After Walter’s visit to their apartment, Erika attempts to molest her mother. “Molest” may be too strong a word, but I feel certain that if an adult did to a child what Erika does to her mother, it’s the word we’d use.