Career best for Portman

Rating: Null/10 (4 February 2011)

"Swan Lake" has been my favourite ballet since I saw the famed Margot Fonteyn perform the lead role in my first visit to this art form. Natalie Portman has been a favourite actress since her precocious performance as a 12 year old in "Leon" led on - via "Star Wars" - to such accomplished work as "Closer" and "The Other Boleyn Girl". I can't say that Darren Aronofsky is a favourite director since, while he is genuinely talented and I admired "The Wrestler", I found "Requiem For A Dream" really disturbing and "The Fountain" unwatchable.
So I approached "Black Swan" with both real excitement and some trepidation. This psycho-drama, which is reminiscent of both "Repulsion" and "The Red Shoes" and has many parallels with the body-punishing depiction of "The Wrestler", will not appeal to everyone and some will regard it as over the top, but I admired it enormously. Aronofsky ensures that the camera is never still and every scene is claustrophobic physically and/or psychologically.
But it is 29 year old Portman who is simply outstanding in her best performance to date as ballet dancer Nina Sayers who has to conquer the demanding twin roles of the White Swan/Odette and the Black Swan/Odile. The role seems made for Portman who is hardly ever off the screen, since she was a dancer as a child and has a degree in psychology. She prepared physically for a year and the choreographer is now her partner Benjamin Millepied.
Supporting roles come from Barbara Hershey as Nina's overbearing mother and Vincent Cassel as the intimidating ballet director and from Mila Kunis and Winona Ryder as up-and-coming and past-her-best ballet dancers respectively - all of whom appear to represent threats to the increasingly paranoid Nina. In the final segment as the eponymous dark bird, Portman looks terrific and her acting achieves new heights, while - as in "The Wrestler" - Aranofsky ends the film on exactly the right shot