Critique of ‘Piano Competition’: Family and Musical Fractures

‘Piano competition’

Manager: Dominique Deruddere

Artists: Taeke Nicolaï, René Vanderjeugd, Anne Coesens

Year: 2023

Premiere: 7/25/24

★★

Belgian director Dominique Deruddere rose to prominence in the late 1980s with his first two feature films, “Crazy Love” and “Wait for Spring, Bandini,” based on novels by talented writers such as Charles Bukowski and John Fante. The filmmaker was losing steam and taking a break from his work; only half a dozen films have been made since then. The ‘piano competition’ is the last of these, and has little to do with those which secured its temporary prestige.

film It focuses on a young pianist and alternates between two beats. He is currently participating with 11 other finalists of a prestigious piano competition in a place called La Capilla, where he has to prepare while isolating himself from the outside: laptops and mobile phones are forbidden. In the past, in his childhood, we tell the origin of today’s traumas, with a mother who is possessive and obsessed with being a famous pianist, and a father who smashes the piano his mother bought him with an axe.

‘The Piano Competition’ is a relaxed film about complex behaviorThe director adopts an overly academic tone for a story that demands a little more heart than your father’s axe-slaying. The luscious, classical score doesn’t always compensate for the emotional wanderings of the protagonist and those around him.