Overrated

Rating: 7/10 (31 January 2011)

I can already see that most reviewers won't agree, but: this movie is overrated in my opinion.
I will just briefly say: the actors are really good, so is the camera and artwork and yes, the characters do represent some interesting psychologic constellations.
But overall nothing about it seems brilliant (except perhaps for camera and artwork, which create a very tense atmosphere): the characters portrayed, a girl who cannot realize an own sexual identity and has to pay for preventing her mothers career by being born; a mother who has given up on life since she failed to become a ballerina and now makes her daughter suffer for her loss while at the same time, lives through her and forces the daughter to live her mother's lost dream. All of this has been portrayed before and much better. There is no "beyond" this in the movie, the rest is exploration of the scenario with endless "thrills for entertainment". Neither does the lucid nightmare portray ballet, nor the music, nor the characters in a credible way. One can accept the hallucinative horror episodes as some surrealistic form of storytelling, but the very bold symbolism they incorporate makes it just less credible and nowhere deeper.
Afterall the movie works somewhat similar as any teeny slasher: shocks for entertainment.