Film
Black Swan
- Director
- Darren Aronofsky
- Certificate
- 15
- Running Time
- 108 mins
You know you’re getting old when Winona Ryder is playing a washed-up character who’s cast aside in favour of a younger, prettier model. That’s not the only disturbing thing about Darren Aronofsky‘s stylish yet absolutely barking mad ballet-horror: a hysterical psychological melodrama, with a highly marketable lesbian twist, whose absolute insistence on taking itself seriously proves perversely entertaining. Many comparisons have been bandied about, from Hitchcock to The Red Shoes, but if you imagine ’70s giallo king Dario Argento working from the All About Eve showbiz rivalry template, equipped with an A-list cast and a modern FX toolbox, you won’t be too wide of the mark.
An impressively toned/alarmingly scrawny (delete according to taste) Natalie Portman plays driven, sheltered New York ballerina Nina, who’s clearly a few pleats short of a tutu from the outset, not least because she lives with her suffocating, overbearing mom from Central Casting (Barbara Hershey, playing it just a couple of notches short of the full Mommie Dearest). Having ditched embittered prima ballerina Beth (Ryder), bullying, sexually predatory New York Ballet artistic director Thomas Leroy (Vincent Cassel) casts Nina in the lead role of his new production of Swan Lake. But while he’s satisfied that she’ll make a perfect White Swan, Leroy is unconvinced that she can nail the devious, sensual, evil twin Black Swan and goads the poor hoofer towards the edge of madness. Matters aren’t helped by the arrival of another dancer, Lily (Mila Kunis), who possesses all the required bad girl credentials for the latter role and swiftly becomes an overt professional threat. Time for hallucinating, borderline bonkers Nina to get in touch with her dark side. You can be sure mommy won’t be happy.
Aronofsky welds the paranoia and competitiveness of the ballet world to a Cronenberg-esque depiction of its physical rigours – all bleeding toes and cracking bones – which is underlined by some impressively subtle digital effects work, including an overt nod to The Fly. As the crescendo builds, so does the preposterousness and overblown imagery (enough of those fractured mirror shots – we geddit already!). Best masturbation scene of 2011, mind.
is needed now More than ever
It’s back on screen in the Watershed’s January Sunday brunch All the Stage’s a World season of films chosen by Wise Children’s Emma Rice.
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