Nina is a naive ballet dancer with talent, but she lacks the real life experience to draw upon to exhibit sexual passion while performing. Technically perfect, her precision hampers her career because it fails to move audiences. But when director Thomas Leroy picks her from the company to lead his modern take on Swan Lake, Nina has a chance to break through. Can this sheltered girl play the Black Swan?
Darren Aronofsky’s latest film, BLACK SWAN, is technically precise but for many viewers it will be a bit too cold even alien. An intellectual horror tale of sorts, the film features a complex performance by Natalie Portman as the ingénue dancer Nina Sayers who can play the White Swan with ease but has no idea how to travel to her dark side to inhabit the dual personality of the Black Swan.
Nina’s protective mother, Erica (Barbara Hershey), is an artist who suffers from depression. This condition has transferred either emotionally or genetically to her daughter. And ironically a little mental instability could help her in finding the core of the Swans she will play on stage.
The director of Nina’s dance company, Thomas Leroy (Vincent Cassel), uses his own sexual appetite to guide his dancers. And when he picks Nina for the lead role, he knows that he’s cast her against type. This reckless move could backfire or, if he plays his cards right, could be a stroke of brilliance. Of course, he has a backup plan. The crass Lily (Mila Kunis) has been chosen as the understudy and could capably take over should Nina not be up to the challenge.
Director Aronofsky works here from a script by four writers including his THE WRESTLER co-producer Mark Heyman. Closer in tone to the director’s REQUIEM FOR A DREAM than his more commercial WRESTLER, BLACK SWAN is like an art house horror film. This tightly constructed movie is slow but never boring mainly due to the attractive and talented cast. But some viewers will be waiting for something to happen that really never does. For the patient viewer, however, BLACK SWAN will be very satisfying.
Aronofsky makes movies for thinking people. This why it is so surprising that he’s taking the helm of THE WOLVERINE, the sequel to the failed attempt to give the popular X-Men character his own series of movies. The new Wolverine film will once again star Hugh Jackman as the iconic superhero, and Aronofsky and Jackman worked together in the visually stunning THE FOUNTAIN in 2006. THE FOUNTAIN was an intellectual science fiction movie that may have been a little too smart to capture a wide enough audience to cover its significant production budget. But Aronofsky is an artist first, business considerations definitely come second. And I can’t wait to see what Aronofsky does with a superhero movie. Like the casting by Leroy in BLACK SWAN, it is against type, and could be a disaster or a stroke of genius.
BLACK SWAN is one of the most unusual films I’ve seen in 2010.
Watch the trailer:
