
Felisberto Fernandez is a piano tuner of exceptional skill, hired by Dr. Emmanuel Droz to come to a remote clinic to clean and refurbish Droz's seven automatons, elaborate mechanical constructs. Droz wants the work done quickly, in time for an opera he's staging for himself. Fernandez's attentions are captured by two women at the clinic, Assumpta, the clinic's manager, and Malvina van Stille, a patient who is also a superb singer. Fernandez works on the machines and is drawn ... (Full plot summary below)
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Felisberto Fernandez is a piano tuner of exceptional skill, hired by Dr. Emmanuel Droz to come to a remote clinic to clean and refurbish Droz's seven automatons, elaborate mechanical constructs. Droz wants the work done quickly, in time for an opera he's staging for himself. Fernandez's attentions are captured by two women at the clinic, Assumpta, the clinic's manager, and Malvina van Stille, a patient who is also a superb singer. Fernandez works on the machines and is drawn to the women while Droz may be manipulating more than the automatons. Do emotions and choice play any part, or it is all opera?
Leave your thoughts about The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes.
| Film Journal InternationalEric MonderThe music is gorgeously classical and some of the images are memorable and haunting, but experiencing the film is near-torture. |
| Murphy's Movie ReviewsTed MurphyThe 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. |
| Film Comment MagazineGuy MaddinShot in HD and wholly embracing the technology, Piano Tuner makes bold leaps into visual domains previously untrodden by filmmakers, even the Quays, but incorporates plenty of their animation and their trademark density of decor. Absolutely entrancing!!! |
| New York TimesJeannette CatsoulisStephen and Timothy Quay merge live-action and animation to create a tragic fantasy about a beautiful opera singer, a lovesick piano tuner and the mad scientist with plans for both of them. |
| Seattle TimesTed FryIt 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. |
| Eye for FilmAnton Bitelblends live action and animation to create a surreal hermetic vision that is as beautifully seductive as it is chillingly inaccessible. |
| Chicago ReaderJ. R. JonesAs in most of the Quays' fantasias, the narrative is oblique and slow moving but the florid visuals are rife with sexual and psychological overtones. |
| AV ClubScott Tobias[Piano Tuner of Earthquakes is] one of those rare examples of a completely original environment created for the screen. Then people start talking, and the snoozing soon commences. |
| Boston GlobeTy BurrThe whole movie feels filmed through the wrong end of a stereopticon: stiff, fascinating, riddled with secrets it doesn't care to divulge. |
| Village VoiceKaren WilsonWhat we are seeing is the most rational irrationality-and all sheer artifice anyway. |