Even Van Wilder wouldn't know what to make of Erika Kohut (Isabelle Huppert), a single, fortysomething piano teacher at the Vienna Conservatory. Erika lives with her mother (Annie Girardot), treats her students like slaves, visits sex shops, watches porn, hides bondage toys in her boudoir, mutilates her vagina with a razor and spies on couples having sex at drive-ins. When a hunkish student, Walter Klemmer (Benoit Magimel), follows Erika into a restroom, he gets more than he bargained for. Later, she writes him a letter that sets the terms for sex. The upshot is: Bite me, kick me, punch me, sit on my face, and let me put my tongue up your ass. Walter is appalled. Erika may sound like a submissive woman, but she wants to call the shots.

Which is, of course, the point of the film that writer-director Michael Haneke (Code Unknown) has made from Elfriede Jelinek's novel. Jelinek writes fiercely about sexual politics, about female music teachers being forced to serve the gods of high culture, about the consequences of what she calls "a phallic woman" who co-opts the male right to control. 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.

“Is It True”

As the British Invasion reached its peak in 1964, Brenda Lee went from Nashville to London to record one of her hardest-rocking hits, her perky vocal backed by a stuttering, squalling guitar. That guitar was played by session musician Jimmy Page, yet to skyrocket to fame with first the Yardbirds and then Led Zeppelin. "She said to me, 'I've come here to make a record with the British sound,'" remembered producer Mickie Most. "She felt she wouldn't get the same sound in Nashville because they're only just catching up on the British beat group sound of about six months ago."