Gripping from start to finish, whether or not you're interested in ballet

Rating: 8/10 (12 January 2012)

Black Swan is the story of a young ballet dancer named Nina, played by Natalie Portman, who dances for a production company that is apparently in financial trouble. The upcoming production is a new version of Swan Lake, in which both the White Swan and the Black Swan, are to be played by one dancer. Nina is keen to get the part and eventually does, but she soon discovers it's much more emotionally taxing than she expected.
Now, I don't know a thing about ballet. Before I saw Black Swan I didn't even know what Swan Lake was actually about. But since I'm a fan of psychological dramas, such an unfamiliar setting in this genre is exactly what appealed to me; this was going to be a little bit different. An art form as skilled and precise as ballet needs a skilled hand to depict convincingly on screen, and director Darren Aronofsky is the man to do just that. The pacing of the film is very tight; no scene drags or feels rushed and the gradual build-up of Nina's descent into madness accumulates very steadily.
In terms of performances, everybody is perfectly cast; I particularly liked Vincent Cassell as the perfectionist director. Probably the most convincing performance though, is Barbara Hershey as Nina's control-freak mother. Throughout the film this character presents a very two-faced attitude, and the subtle ways in which she changes from a beaming smile one moment, to an indignant stare the next, appears very real and always makes you feel uneasy. Basically no one else could have played this role.
The film does run into some problems when the 'horror' elements start working there way into the foreground. This is obviously what the writers and Darren Aronofsky were going for and it does work in principle, but there are just a few moments that are slightly over-the-top and, well, a little bit silly. Some of the more surreal moments incorporate certain CGI/post-production enhancements, and this bothered me for a couple of reasons. Firstly, they just look out of place with the rest of film. Secondly, Aronofsky has proved in his earlier work (Pi and Requiem For A Dream) that he is capable of creating paranoia and disorientation purely through the editing of what he has already shot.
This could have been a lot worse though (I'm grateful there wasn't any full-blown CGI monsters in sight), and only taint the overall film rather than ruin it. Black Swan is good, it's very good, but just falls short of being exceptional. Still, it's too well made, too well acted and too entertaining to dismiss outright because of its flaws, and I highly recommend it.