Isabelle Huppert puts herself through the mill as a sharp-minded, middle-aged piano teacher at the Vienna Conservatory, who cruises the city's porn shows and sex shops while her mother (Annie Girardot) waits up for her. Into this cauldron drops a handsome student (Benoît Magimel) and the pot boils over in a steam of sado-masochistic sex. In this painfully bizarre movie, Huppert gives a bravura performance, illuminating a bitter portrait of a woman self-destructing through her twin love-hate relationships, based on Elfriede Jelinek's controversial novel.