Black Swan

Black Swan will not be to everybody's taste - its mixture of ballet, pyscholigical thriller and body horror is a challenging mix. It has been compared more to director Darren Aronofsky's last film The Wrestler than to other classic ballet films such as The Red Shoes, but whilst it does share some DNA with The Wrestler (like a fascination with the physical lengths performers will go to for their art) it is actually a very different feeling film, a more challenging one and quite possibly a better one. Whilst The Wrestler was in many respects a social film, built around a structure of failed, tentative and re-launched relationships, Black Swan is more inward looking. The drama is largely contained in the head of techinically gifted but repressed dancer Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman) who after being cast in the lead in Swan Lake, struggles to get in touch with her darker side in order to play the titular Black Swan.

Nina is surrounded by an over-bearing mother (Barbara Hershey), a manipulative director (Vincent Cassell), a bitter former lead (Winona Ryder) and a fellow dancer who may or may not be after her role (Mila Kunis). Portman is superb and will probably deservedly head a strong field to take the Best Actress oscar for a role which sees her move from timid and reserved to dangerously unloosed.

My other Oscar tip for this film is Aronofsky for Best Director. As has been much commented on, rather than viewing the dancing from the usual audience perspective, he places the camera right in the thick of it, capturing all the strain and effort involved. Amazingly this adds to rather than distracts from the beauty of the ballet. His other main strength is to capture the paranoid insecurity of his lead - this is a film where much is contained (or possibly not) in half-heard whispers and brief glimpses as the pressure starts to get to Nina and, to be cliched, the boundary between what is real and what is happening in Nina's head get increasingly blurred.

Not everything works - Ryder's role in particular feels like a badly written (and underwritten) cliche. I'm also slightly unsure about the ending, but as in The Wrestler it provides an odd mixture of triumph and tragedy that will at least get you thinking.

Overall - 8.5/10 Thought-provoking, challenging and, at times, surprisingly beautiful.