The Meshuge Swan

Rating: 4/10 (4 December 2010)

The old chestnut about having to experience life before being able to be a true artist is rehashed in the case of a psychotic ballerina. Trouble is, beautiful Natalie Portman, the actress portraying this ballerina is no great dancer, and therefore the dance sequences are being filmed either in a now-you-see-her-upper-body closeup, with her arms executing over and over the same ballet-101 gesture, or in a now- you-see someone's feet closeup, or finally now-from a greater distance-you-see-a ballerina in a pas-de-deux. It makes for clumsy filming and we get too much of it. Add to this that her male dancing partner lacks the good looks one expects of the Prince in "Swan Lake," and then, he turns out to be a klutz to boot. All the characters come in two one-dimensional variants, which might as well carry tags of "I am good" and "I am evil." True, this reproach could also be leveled at the scenario of that superb ballet, "Swan Lake," but then most people watch it for story told by Tchaikovsky's music, and not for its silly scenario by Begichev and Geltser (you can look this up in Wikipedia, like I did, for if you are honest, you will have to admit that, like me, you have never heard of either of them). The ballet is rescued by Tchaikovsky, but no, even remotely comparable, genius rescues this silly movie. The horror of the hallucination scenes has been done to much more effect by Roman Polanski in "Repulsion."
To my mind, the only thing that could save this movie would be a remake as a Woody Allen comedy under the title "The Meshuge Swan"