Critics Scoreboard
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Average Critic Score:
79
(26 sources)
79
(26 sources)
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100
-
100
Washington Post
Seems less like a fictional story than a tour through Freud's forgotten files. Read Full Review » -
100
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90
LA Weekly
At once an emotional thriller and a domestic horror movie -- a woman's picture with a vengeance, in which the bloodletting is kept to a minimum, and ends up all the more powerful and profound for it. Read Full Review » -
90
The Onion (A.V. Club)
A viscerally punishing study of repression and masochism, carried out with the utmost discretion and chilling reserve. Read Full Review » -
90
Salon.com
When you see The Piano Teacher in a movie theater you get a chance to go back in time, back to the days when French movies were titillating, provocative and kind of smart. Read Full Review » -
90
Washington Post
A disconcertingly assured tango between tenderness and brutality. Read Full Review » -
90
Los Angeles Times
The Piano Teacher will surely be too strong for some audiences and is best left to those who like films that take big risks and get away with them. Read Full Review » -
88
Chicago Sun-Times
There is an old saying: Be careful what you ask for, because you might get it. The Piano Teacher has a more ominous lesson: Be especially careful with someone who has asked for you. Read Full Review » -
88
Chicago Tribune
You will not forget The Piano Teacher. Nor will you forget Isabelle Huppert, a brave, brilliant actress who here plays her masterpiece. Read Full Review » -
88
Miami Herald
The result is a gripping psychological thriller that, while lacking the power of "Funny Games," is still the work of a master. Read Full Review » -
88
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80
New Times (L.A.)
Huppert has never looked more beautiful. Despite her severe expression and lack of makeup, her face communicates enormous character. She proves absolutely spellbinding. Read Full Review » -
80
Rolling Stone
Watching Haneke's film is, aptly enough, a challenge and a punishment. But watching Huppert, a great actress tearing into a landmark role, is riveting. Read Full Review » -
80
The New York Times
Has the feel of a clinical case study elevated into a subject of aesthetic and philosophical discourse. Read Full Review » -
80
New York Magazine
Haneke is an exploitation filmmaker of the highest gifts. His movies are not to be entered into lightly. Read Full Review » -
80
The New Yorker
A seriously scandalous work, beautifully made, and it deserves a sizable audience that might argue over it, appreciate it -- even hate it. [1 April 2002, p. 98] Read Full Review » -
78
Austin Chronicle
Although little is ultimately “solved” or demystified in The Piano Teacher, the movie allows a chaperoned peek into the mind of one of civilization's “discontents.” Read Full Review » -
75
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75
Entertainment Weekly
The audience for this grimly disquieting film is, or ought to be, self-selecting. Read Full Review » -
70
Village Voice
The Piano Teacher's study in lurid sexual pathology occasions a tour de force by Isabelle Huppert as the title character. Read Full Review » -
63
New York Post
Thanks to a superb performance by Isabelle Huppert, it's compulsively, gruesomely watchable. Read Full Review » -
63
Philadelphia Inquirer
A squirmingly strange and brutal study of sexual power, masochism and mother-daughter madness. Read Full Review » -
60
Chicago Reader
If you like being shaken up and don't care too much why or how, this is probably for you; Huppert gives her all to the part, and you won't be bored. Read Full Review » -
50
Variety
Whatever valid points are being explored are hopelessly clouded by the film's unwavering earnestness as it descends into silliness and excess. Read Full Review » -
40
TV Guide
This is a psychological study that rejects psychology, an erotic drama of surpassing coldness, and a story of amour fou in which the madness is calculated and the love frozen. Read Full Review »
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