BLACK SWAN (Darren Aronofsky, 2010) ***1/2

Rating: 8/10 (22 December 2010)

I had first read about this at the time of its Venice Film Festival presentation, where the picture was (unsurprisingly but rather misleadingly) compared by many to Dario Argento's supernatural shocker SUSPIRIA (1977). Consequently, I went into BLACK SWAN (nothing to do, of course, with the classic Tyrone Power swashbuckler from 1942) expecting more horror elements than were actually on offer, but I was still very much impressed with the end result. Back then, the movie was not really talked of as the Oscar contender it is clearly shaping up to be; still, two-thirds of the way in I was perhaps ready to consider it overrated myselfthat is, until the last act kicked in and took the film to a whole new level! Needless to say, given the ballet milieu, parallels to The Archers' THE RED SHOES (1948) could not be avoided (it even contrives a similarly tragic denouement!). However, many another individualistic film-maker's style has also been applied to Aronofsky's effort: from Roman Polanski (with shades of REPULSION [1965] being especially felt throughout) to Davids Cronenberg (due to its adopting his trademark 'body-horror' device) and Lynch (the whole plays out like one of the director's surreal trips into the human psyche, and MULHOLLAND DRIVE [2001] in particular).
Being one of the major contributing factors to the film's success, a word is obviously in order now about the cast. Naturally, we begin with Natalie Portman: hers has aptly been described a courageous performance – in the Isabelle Adjani POSSESSION (1981) mould – not least because of scenes involving masturbation and lesbianism; having just recently watched Chloe Grace Moretz in LET ME IN (2010), I could not help recalling Portman's own prodigious start as a teen in Luc Besson's LEON (1994). I do not think I have ever watched Mila Kunis in anything prior to BLACK SWAN, but the favorable notices she has been getting for this role are well-deserved – managing to leave a mark even when the show clearly belongs to Portman. While Vincent Cassel is better than usual here, he is hardly in the same class as Anton Walbrook from THE RED SHOESand since his character promises us a visceral re-imagining of the Tchaikovsky opus, I was ultimately disappointed that the unfolding horror proved to be of the 'all-in-the-mind' variety! Barbara Hershey's possessive mother, then, lends the film a distinct CARRIE (1976) vibe. As for Winona Ryder, I guess one needs to commend her for being such a sport in accepting the role of a has-been; incidentally, the scene where Portman returns to the now-crippled Ryder the 'mementos' she had pilfered when star-struck of her emerges as its most poignant moment.
Performers driven to the edge for the sake of art (and fame) has long been a cinematic staple, but it has rarely been done so vividly and with such tremendous punch; truth be told, I have always wondered in films like these just how talented actors could be made to play down their gift in scenes where they are not supposed to meet their on-screen taskmaster's standards, or whether the artist behind the camera at times needed to exert himself as much as the one in front of it in order to coax what he was striving for out of his cast! Reflection, too, plays a pivotal part in the narrative: mirrors are omnipresent, while several characters deliberately look alike (so that Portman often sees herself in others!) – preparing one for the bravura sequence where the heroine undergoes a 'literal' metamorphosis from her guise of White Swan (i.e. gauche, virginal) into the Black one (embodying malevolence and seductiveness). No less important, however, is the disquieting score – which, apparently, consists of a variation on "Swan Lake" itself played in reverse!
Having watched all of Aronofsky's feature films, I would probably rank this as his finest yet – with THE WRESTLER (2008), his acclaimed previous release, placing close behind it. On the other hand, I am not over-the-moon as many others are about the rest of the director's work – finding PI (1998) too muddled, REQUIEM FOR A DREAM (2000) too depressing, and THE FOUNTAIN (2006) too ambitious for their own good!