Tag: broken glass

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The Piano Teacher
(La Pianiste)

Director – Michael Haneke – 2001 – Austria, France – Cert. 18 – 131m

*****

A masochistic piano teacher with an abusive mother embarks on an affair with a young male student – the opening film of Complicit: A Michael Haneke Retrospective, in UK cinemas from Friday, June 6th and on BFI Player from Thursday, September 11th 2025

Warning: NSFW.

This is at once representative of Haneke’s wider body of work and very different from it.

Representative because he is one of those directors whose personal use of cinematic vocabulary has been so honed over his years of making movies that he is able to clearly and precisely articulate problematic, controversial and taboo ideas and subject matter that few directors would be able to handle without descending into exploitation or commercialism. He is a director steeped in cinema, fascinated by how the process of making a movie constructs the narrative or other viewing and listening experience, and how that is perceived and understood by audiences.

Different because although Haneke generally writes as well and directs his own films, they are mostly original pieces whereas this one is an adaptation of a book, The Piano Teacher / Die Klavierspielerin by Elfriede Jelinek.… Read the rest

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Nightwatch
(Nattevagten)

Director – Ole Bornedal – 1994 – Denmark – Cert. 18 – 107m

*****

Strange goings-on take place in a morgue after a law student takes on the nightwatchman’s job – out on Shudder UK from Friday, May 17th

Two male students Jens (Kim Bodnia) and Martin (Nikolaj Coster Waldau) make a pact: they are to challenge one another to a series of outrageous acts, and the first one who fails to follow though must marry his girlfriend. One evening, they and respective girlfriends Kalinka (Sofie Gråbøl) and Lotte (Lotte Andersen) are in a bar when two louts appear and hassle the two women as they return from the ladies room. Martin challenges Jens to stand up to them, which he does and gets assaulted for his pains. Jens later challenges Martin to go with 17-year-old prostitute Joyce (Rikke Louise Andersson), an encounter Jens facilitates in a restaurant, pinning his own name on Martin as a cover. Their swapping of names will later prove highly significant.

To save some money for his and Kalinka’s future, Martin takes on a job as a nightwatchman in a morgue, an easy enough job provided you don’t mind being the only living person on the premises along with a batch of corpses, which often includes murder victims since a murderer is currently at large in the area.… Read the rest

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The Feast
(Gwledd)

Director – Lee Haven Jones – 2021 – UK (Wales) – Cert. 18 – 93m

**

The well-heeled wife of a local MP hires a maid to serve a meal for guests, but then things go horribly wrong – shot in the Welsh language and out in cinemas on Friday, August 19th

It’s unusual to see a film executed completely in the Welsh language, and for pulling that off, the makers of The Feast are to be congratulated. Unfortunately, apart from that element and its striking visual palette, this fails to engage.

In rural Wales, well-heeled Glenda (Nia Roberts) is preparing to have guests over for the evening. Unfortunately, the girl she usually hires from the pub is unavailable, so she’s taken a replacement, Cadi (Annes Elwy), another girl who works there and comes highly recommended. However, Cadi is an unknown quantity and the woman doesn’t really trust her – and won’t do so unless Cadi can do something to earn that trust.

The woman and her family don’t feel like the sort of people you’d want to have anything to do with if you could avoid them. From Cadi’s point of view, she is most definitely not trusted by the woman who hired her, and feels most definitely an outsider.… Read the rest