It was easy to be repelled by Austrian director Michael Haneke’s 1997 film Funny Games, in which sadistic criminals torture a bourgeois family in their clutches. Speaking at the Cannes Film Festival last year, Isabelle Huppert said, "I didn’t have the guts to do it. Funny Games was too hard, a sacrificial experience for the actors. That didn’t prevent me from considering it a magisterial film."

And it didn’t stop her from appearing in Haneke’s new and likewise controversial La pianiste/The Piano Teacher, which will open in town this Friday. Huppert, who won Best Actress at Cannes last year, plays Erika Kohut, a 40ish instructor at the Vienna Conservatory who’s into porno booths, voyeurism, sado-masochism, slashing at her vagina, and demanding that a lover punch her in the stomach. "This film is more classic in nature, more romantic in parts," Huppert said, explaining her decision to take the role. "I read the script, and a spade was a spade. There were no monsters hanging around. We knew where we were going. Michael asked the right questions. Not all scenes were easy, but there was no unease in the filming.

"Erika cannot accept the usual rules of the domination of men over women. Rather than be the one watched, she’s the one who looks at others. There’s a masochistic dimension, but it goes beyond masochism. It’s a film about control, and Erika doesn’t want to lose control. Erika is a role you accept not intrinsically but on the basis of the director. Since it was Haneke, I accepted it."

Michael Haneke returned the compliment. "I’d do La pianiste only if Isabelle accepted the role. As she did, I made the film. Also, there was great cooperation with Elfriede Jelinek, who gave me the freedom to write the script from her book. She read the script, found it fine, talked only of the costumes. When you make a movie based on a novel, it’s a wager for both director and novelist, a difficult adventure. You can lose the quality of the language.

"There is a kind of self-reflexiveness in the book, a parody of the confessional novel. It wasn’t my intention to make a self-reflexive movie. It’s a genre film, following the structure of genre. Some might say it’s a parody of melodrama, though we leave out what’s in melodrama: explanations. Did people laugh during the press screening? This might surprise you: there are lots of scenes that are humorous. It’s all right that people laugh. During Funny Games, some people laughed hysterically because they couldn’t manage their feelings."

Is this movie about Austria or about all societies? Haneke answered, "All societies, but this connection with music is particular to Austria. We think we’re the center of the world as far as music is concerned. Much of music in La pianiste is from the novel, including Schubert and Bach, Jelenik’s favorites, with their sadness. I chose the lieder of Schubert. I’m a real Schubert fan."

Huppert added, "Music was always present on the set, a kind of melancholy that was part of our preparation for our roles. Michael wanted me to actually play the piano, and that was great fun. The rhythm of Bach matched what we were trying to produce in the film."

One journalist asked Haneke why he wanted to make a movie about such a "sick" woman? Haneke shrugged. "I don’t think she’s a sick woman. I don’t think she’s ill. That’s your interpretation. She’s a neurotic who is rather representative of our society, though pushed to an extreme."

And another journalist had the temerity to ask, what does La pianiste mean? "There are questions in the film that are up to the viewer to find the interpretation," said Haneke. "I can’t answer. There’s no message! No message!"

La pianiste opens this Friday, June 7, at the Kendall Square.