Transparent and Superficial

Rating: 1/10 (1 July 2011)

I was late in seeing this movie due to work and travel obligations, so I eagerly awaited my chance to rent the DVD and be able watch this award-winning film.
First of all, I'm a big Natalie Portman fan, so I don't fault her in any of my criticism.
However, the movie was so transparent that it was very disturbing that the writers and directors didn't try to lead you down the path where you had to keep guessing, like in Fight Club and Shutter Island.
Instead, I knew from the beginning that Nina had driven off of a cliff and the rest of the movie was watching the bits and pieces of life pass by before she inevitably crashed on the ground below. The ending was never in doubt.
It was so clever to have a womanizing director demanding quid pro quo for his favors in his starlets' ballet careers. I've never seen that before.
As a psychological drama, this fails on many fronts and seems to have been geared toward pretty unsophisticated viewers, that is if they felt that they were fooling anyone about what was happening in the whole movie. They may not have intended to fool anyone at all, which would make the movie even worse.
That said, Natalie did a great job as usual.