Battle of wills for an unlikely maestro

It is carrying the piano on which Monica Bleibtreu's ancient Prussian teacher will encourage the few prisoners interested to gain a musical foothold on the outside world.

There are only four pupils left, the prison superintendent tells the old lady, and one of them has just hanged herself in her cell. But there's also a new pupil, Jenny (Hannah Herzsprung), a recalcitrant young prodigy who persists in playing "Negro music" even though her Schumann is superb.

Somehow the teacher is going to have to train up a girl whose self-destructive urges make her appearance in a piano contest problematic. She would easily win it, but would she have the discipline even to enter? Besides, the old lady tells her, she doesn't wash enough.

After the success of The Lives of Others and The Counterfeiters, both Oscar winners, it isn't surprising that Chris Kraus's film has been sold all over the world. It won several German awards and five more prizes at international festivals.

At the heart of it are two superb performances. There's Bleibtreu as the elderly, lesbian teacher who is desperate to foster the abused and abusing young girl's talent. And Herzsprung as the prisoner, a girl with a history of parental abuse, who plays like an angel and behaves like a devil.

The battle of wills between these two is what makes Four Minutes distinctive.

Though its episodic and fractured narrative style is a bit of a pain at times, Kraus manages to summon up the atmosphere at the prison, where nobody can trust anybody else and the staff are no better than the inmates. The cinematography is especially eloquent.

But it's the performances and the music you will remember, and an extraordinary ending in which Jenny starts with Schumann and finishes with a battering self-made sonata that brings the house down at the contest. She bows ironically. She is not defeated - and teacher knows it.

Four Minutes (Vier Minuten)
Cert: 15