BLACK SWAN (2010)

I signed up for my Curzon membership in New Year's Day and since then I've been spoilt by the offerings released during January. First The King's Speech, then 127 Hours and now Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan. Rarely do films live up to the hype quite as much as these three, but to have them all released within a fortnight of each other is incredible.



Thought of as a female companion piece to his last film The Wrestler, Black Swan is also the moment where Natalie Portman really steps up a level. Sure she has been in great films and impressed before, but this is a hell of a performance. At the beginning of the film, her Nina is a introverted, overly controlled, almost cowardly dancer who strives for perfection. The dancing is her personality, the be all and end all, nothing else. Portman is a big screen presence but she seems to almost shrink herself during the opening scenes. Her fragility is very convincing and makes her transformation and what comes after even more impressive.

Once she is cast as the Swan Queen in a huge production of Swan Lake the film really gets going. She is told by the sexual predatory artistic director of the production, Thomas Leroy (Vincent Cassel) that she must find the Black Swan within her in order to really make the part her own. What follows is a transformation in Nina's character that is at times terrifying, which tests her sanity leaving her constantly questioning what is reality. The duelling personalities and disturbing visions give Portman plenty to get her teeth into and she really excels. The story of the film has parallels to the story of Swan Lake and it very cleverly refers to the story in a lot of the developments.

The world of ballet gives Aronofsky a fantastic canvas to spread his genius across. Rivalry and insecurities are rife in a cut throat world that make it all the more believable that Nina's situation is as serious as a matter of life and death. The main rival (well apart from herself) is Lily, played by Mila Kunis, last seen being as exciting as scenery in The Book of Eli. She is much better on this occasion though, being everything that Nina is not. Confident, unpredictable, impulsive. She acts as the embodiment of the Black Swan that Nina must find in herself, only causing Nina to be even more unsure of herself.

My description so far makes it seem a little like a normal sport-type film, much like the wrestler in fact. Girl wants to succeed but must overcome barriers, blah, blah, blah. However, while The Wrestler is all gritty realism, and to be fair Black Swan does start very much grounded in reality, this film quickly takes a shift into fantasy - dream-like (well more nightmare-like) sequences represent Nina's sanity unravelling. And who better to handle these trips than Aronofsky? There are fantastic moments, involving mirrors, drug-induced visions, some are genuinely terrifying and jumpy, with some quite brutal violence thrown in for good measure. In fact at times it does resemble a horror film and is all the better for it.

Aronofsky also pays a lot attention to the detail of the dancing itself. You see muscles flexing under pressure, you hear bones and toes creak - I was really left under no illusion as to the strain these dancers put on their body. He also manages to put you in the thick of it, the camera twirls with the dancers, almost choreographed itself, the intensity of the performance passed onto the viewer. It's important that special mention goes to Portman's dancing. I've heard that she went through some very intense training, which included a broken rib, to make the performance scenes completely convincing, but it's all worth it as when she is dancing it's beautiful to watch. I'm almost tempted to go to the ballet......

The supporting cast are a mixed bag. Barbara Hersey is very good as Nina's overly controlling and pushy mother, adding to the claustrophobia of Nina's situation. Vincent Cassel does what he is asked to do well, but much of his dialogue is pervy innuendo, a bit Carry On Plie. It's good to see Winona Ryder back in something more fitting to her talent as a bitter, has-been performer. She gets possibly the scariest and most brutal scene which is still sitcking with me now 36 hours later.

Go and see it, I urge you. From the trailer you wouldn't expect it to be one that must be seen at the cinema, but I'm telling you it benefits hugely from the big screen. It won't be what you expect either, you are taken on a ride that you do not want to end. It's an epic piece of film-making, by a creative film-maker with a absolutely first class central performance. Much like 127 Hours then, and if it were up to me, the Best Director Oscar would be a two horse race between Aronofsky and Boyle.