Erika Kohut teaches piano at Vienna’s conservatory. Her educational eros is not without sadistic elements. She demands obedience and submission from her students. She lives, and shares a bed with her domineering mother, and seeks relief from her urges with porn films and self-harming. At an in-house concert, she meets young pianist Walter, a talented dilettante who falls in love with her. She reluctantly accepts him as a student. When she reveals her masochistic impulses to him, she is met with incomprehension and aggression