With every white side, is a dark one

Rating: 8/10 (24 December 2010)

This movie is more about character development than an involved plot. There is no real twist & turns that encompass many other thrillers. But the acting, casting, production & directing is top notch. Not a real heavy story line, but there are anticipations that leave the viewer wondering.
Natalie Portman, as Nina Sayers, does an excellent job in this story. She is completely believable, and leaves nothing behind in her portrayal of this tortured to the dark side character. Mila Kunis, as Lily, the rival, does a good enough job in portraying the part. I might be the most critical on her but her dancing was as good as any of the other people in the film. Mila might have been just a touch over the top as the "bad girl" of the dancing troop. Barbara Hershey plays Nina's mom. She plays the part like she was born for it. She is over bearing & controlling, and can be seen as the root to why Nina is so embattled. Winona Ryder (beth) plays a small part, but underlines the ruthlessness that is the competitiveness in the dancing world, and the back drop to this film; bringing out the dark side in all of the main characters. Finally, Vincent Cassel, Thomas Leroy character, is the catalyst that brings the characters together. Thomas is a very powerful character that pits the others against each other in his own clandestine manner. You get the sense that when his dancers are used up, he casts them aside like trash. In the mean time however, if you are the dancer in his favor, you are the member of royalty that is monarchy in the world of his ballet troop.
The story unfolds as an up & coming young talented star, Nina, is thrust to the lime light, due to the falling of grace of an aging dancer, Beth. Nina is by her own word, "perfect" as the white swan but falls short in the metamorphosis into the Dark Swan. The dance director, Thomas Leroy, casts doubt on Nina's ability to dance the full spectrum of the swans. Nina's battles not only emerge from competition from the other, under study dancer, Lily, but from her own mind. Nina knows all she needs, is to find "it", but will Leroy allow the development? Nina is tortured because she feels that Leroy is playing her with Lily. In the mean time, Lily is getting into Nina's head by being an intervening force of Nina's self discipline & personal life. Lily is selling it as a friendship but in Nina's head, it is a torment that is an em-battlement of her wits. With no real plot twists, the viewer is left wonder where they are? Though they're not in the overall plot, there are always twists that can haunt some minds