The The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes (2005)

43% of critics liked it
(40 reviews)
60% of users liked it
(1,189 ratings)

The Brothers Quay return for their first film in a decade with this live-action story of an 19th-century opera singer who is murdered on-stage shortly before her upcoming wedding. Soon after being slain by the nefarious Dr. Emmanuel Droz (Gottfried John) during a live performance, Malvina van Stille… More The Brothers Quay return for their first film in a decade with this live-action story of an 19th-century opera singer who is murdered on-stage shortly before her upcoming wedding. Soon after being slain by the nefarious Dr. Emmanuel Droz (Gottfried John) during a live performance, Malvina van Stille (Amira Casar) is spirited away to the inventor's remote villa to be reanimated and forced to play the lead in a grim production staged to recreate her abduction. As the time for the performance draws near, piano tuner of earthquakes Felisberto (Cesar Sarachu) sets out to activate the seven essential automatons who dot the dreaded doctor's landscape and make sure all the essential elements are in place. Once again instilled with life after her brief stay in the afterworld, amnesiac Malvina is soon drawn to the mysterious Felisberto as a result of his uncanny resemblance to her one-time fiancé Adolfo (also Sarachu). ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

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Rating, Runtime: Unrated, 1 hr. 38 min.
Directed By: Stephen Quay, Timothy Quay
Written By: Alan Passes, Stephen Quay, Timothy Quay
Genres: Drama, Art House & International, Science Fiction & Fantasy

In Theaters: Nov 17, 2006 Limited
On DVD: Apr 24, 2007
Studio: Zeitgeist Films

Critic Reviews

John Monaghan, Detroit Free Press
What the movie lacks in acting and coherence, it more than makes up for through imagery.
Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune
It's a hauntingly effective, poetic mood piece but an exasperating drama.
Bill Stamets, Chicago Sun-Times
This opaque tale offers meticulously crafted atmosphere, but rather less passion or drama.
J. R. Jones, Chicago Reader
As in most of the Quays' fantasias, the narrative is oblique and slow moving but the florid visuals are rife with sexual and psychological overtones.
Ty Burr, Boston Globe
The whole movie feels filmed through the wrong end of a stereopticon: stiff, fascinating, riddled with secrets it doesn't care to divulge.
Kristine McKenna, Los Angeles Times
... those who can surrender to the Quays' poetic logic will find "The Piano Tuner" to be nothing short of a masterpiece.
Dennis Schwartz, Ozus' World Movie Reviews
The narrative fails to be as colorful as the title.
Anton Bitel, Eye for Film
blends live action and animation to create a surreal hermetic vision that is as beautifully seductive as it is chillingly inaccessible.
Jeff Vice, Deseret News, Salt Lake City
The story proves to be elusive, and the robotic performances of the cast make it hard to care about any of the characters -- or to try to figure out what's supposed to be going on.
Marc Mohan, Oregonian
It's one thing to make an audience sweat a bit to ferret out a plot, or piece together visual clues in order to comprehend a film. But it's quite another to dunk such richly imagined pictures in such a thick coat of shadow.
Walter Chaw, Film Freak Central
Beyond that? Not much.
Ted Fry, Seattle Times
It is a bold step into a mainstream realm for its ancient fablelike theme, agile storytelling, magnificent design and sure grasp of long-form narrative structure.
Ted Murphy, Murphy's Movie Reviews
The Quay brothers have created a gloriously gorgeous filmwith wondrous set pieces that have been beautifully shot inburnished tones by cinematographer Nic Knowland. It's a dark and disturbing fairy tale that fans of the brothers' work will embrace.
Marc Savlov, Austin Chronicle
Like a dream, this film is wispy and ethereal; like a nightmare, it lodges in your hindbrain and gnaws away with gleeful abandon.
Leo Goldsmith, Reverse Shot
Exquisitely detailed, difficult to grasp hold of, and always obscured by molds and corrosions. The Quay Brothers are distinct oddities in the landscape of contemporary cinema.
Jeffrey M. Anderson, Combustible Celluloid
Characters slowly whisper their dialogue to one another in scenes that would put the dead to sleep.
Eric Monder, Film Journal International
The music is gorgeously classical and some of the images are memorable and haunting, but experiencing the film is near-torture.
Tim Grierson, L.A. Weekly
However much The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes wants to haunt your dreams, it has a better chance of production-designing you to death.

Read all 18 critic reviews

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Featured Audience Ratings

Hal M

I viewed The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes twice at the Philadephia Film Festival, and multiple times on DVD since. A marvelously creative movie with fine acting, dazzling visuals and haunting score. There's fantastic detail work here by the fabulously creative Brothers Quay,… More
I viewed The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes twice at the Philadephia Film Festival, and multiple times on DVD since. A marvelously creative movie with fine acting, dazzling visuals and haunting score. There's fantastic detail work here by the fabulously creative Brothers Quay, originally from Philadelphia but now thoroughly 'European'. It must have taken years to make it. Does the plot make sense? Yes. There's a good one paragraph synopsis [not by me] at zeitgeistfilms.com. The central character is the mysterious Dr. Droz perfectly played by Gottfried John. He has an estate set on his own surreal island, apparently just off the coast of Iberia. Droz is among other things an 'alienist' (the closest thing to a psychiatrist, circa 1870), with the powers of a mesmerist. He has enslaved some of his former patients for use as servants. Droz is also a genius at inventing mechanical automata. Perhaps he has even mastered the art of capturing a person's soul to install in one of his machines... Thankfully from this reviewer's point of view, Droz is also a horn-dog, and our filmmakers aren't shy about exposing the charms of the two lovely female principals, played by Amira Casar and Asumpte Serna.