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Ballerina Nina (Natalie Portman) suffers a slow emotional and mental deterioration when she auditions for “Swan Lake” in “Black Swan.” |
Darren Aronofsky’s disturbing “Black Swan” chronicles in exquisite, excruciating detail how a control-freak ballerina pirouettes off into the abyss of madness and obsession.
This psychological drama is part Hitchcock’s “Psycho,” Roman Polanski’s “Repulsion” and Herbert Ross’ “The Turning Point,” all permeated with a Cronenbergian addiction to physiological ickiness.
It tells the story of Nina, a longtime ballet dancer played by Natalie Portman, who reportedly prepared for her physically demanding role for nearly a year. The work paid off, because her portrait of a dancer is astonishing and convincing in its detail and execution, at least to the untrained eye of a mass audience.
Nina lives with her mother, Erica (Barbara Hershey), a slightly embittered former ballet star now living off the fumes of her daughter’s meager success with her prestigious New York dance company.
The company is preparing to launch the classic “Swan Lake,” and the meticulously committed Nina could be up for the dual roles of the good White Swan and the evil Black Swan.
She has the nice White Swan nailed. It’s the naughty Black Swan that makes her manipulative director Thomas Leroy (Vincent Cassel) think she can’t handle the role. Her technical craftsmanship is masterful, but her dancing lacks passion and feeling.
“I want to be perfect,” Nina says. (Read more…)