Amazing performance by Natalie Portman

Rating: 10/10 (24 July 2012)

This is a very difficult film to describe, and as many have already done so, perhaps I should not struggle too hard to give an account of it. The film is chiefly notable for the amazing performance of Natalie Portman as the character Nina Sayers, a young ballet dancer who is chosen to dance the lead in a new production of SWAN LAKE, where she has to play both the 'good' white swan and the 'bad' black swan. This leads to her having a psychological crisis, where she splits into a dual personality of the good Nina and the bad Nina. The idea is frankly rather contrived, but the film is very powerful despite this, and Natalie Portman, who has been taking dancing lessons since the age of 4, miraculously becomes a prima ballerina on the screen. Ever since she appeared in LEON in 1994, Natalie Portman has been attracting attention by her remarkable presence, personality, and ability. She has even directed two short films and has now become an executive producer. Is there no limit to her talents? This film has a lot of unnecessarily prurient scenes, and sexual content which some will find highly objectionable. Portman sturdily hangs onto her clothes and refuses to do nude scenes, and good for her. She is not a 'lets show em me tits' gal at all. But there may well have been a struggle over this with the director, Darren Aronofsky, for the way he does extreme close-ups of her bottom and makes her masturbate on screen suggests that he may be a 'rip their clothes off' kinda guy. Maybe the microscopic study of Portman's bottom was his revenge for being denied a sight of her tits. It certainly looks that way. Anyway, I am very glad that Portman kept her tits to herself, because it was absolutely unnecessary for her to do otherwise. Actresses do need to resist lecherous directors and producers more than they do. The new production has been devised by a dynamic character played by the ever-versatile French star Vincent Cassel, who seems to know every language (I once saw him speaking fluent Portuguese in a film, and that ain't easy to pronounce). Here he yatters away in English as if he had been born in America. I would not say that he was the ideal casting choice, but I can appreciate that the director was trying to find someone a bit more cosmopolitan than the average American movie star, as they are mostly so provincial and culturally unsophisticated that the idea of one of them directing a ballet would be a joke. Portman's mother is played by Barbara Hershey, who does an excellent job as a frustrated and thwarted stage-mother who has some deep psychological issues herself. This film is a very powerful and disturbing emotional experience, and is extremely well made. If one sets aside the fact that the whole premise of the story is extremely contrived, it can sweep you away for 108 minutes. I have known a number of ballet dancers, a few very well, and I never came across any who were genuinely and thoroughly bonkers, but maybe they really do exist out there somewhere. I suppose they must do. Everybody else is crazy, so why not also ballet dancers? Certainly Natalie Portman is so convincing that she must have inspired shivers down the spines of millions of people by now. Mila Kunis, a Ukrainian Jewish girl with a slangy American accent, is also brilliant as Portman's rival, the dancer Lily. She is not only sexually liberated, she is positively promiscuous and wild, whereas Portman's character is repressed and virginal. These two play well against each other, and generate a lot of sparks. Certainly that was an act of casting which thoroughly worked. Kunis also does a lot of spectacular dancing. This whole production is extremely impressive, and the film deserved its great success.