Over-dramatic and cliché

Rating: 5/10 (28 October 2011)

The cliché aspect of this: this is so diatomic--the first half is the director yelling at the dancer to go from "virginal white" to unleash the "passionate black swan" which is... really not what I thought Swan Lake is about, but just seems to be made up and stretched to add a dramatic plot. The script is totally lacking--the mother has the worst, most cliché lines--"I gave up my life for you! Sweet girl!" and the director continues to pound the black-vs-white metaphor. Sexual harassment for advancement and the vengeful aging star also put in appearances here.
It also seems pushing credibility: Portman seems to have an agonized, needy, nervous expression on her face during the entire film, complete with ragged uneven breathing, which is OK in a person-loses-her-mind film but ballet is famous for valuing athleticism & lightness of expression and no one so obviously nervous and unhinged would be let a lead role. For example, in the rehearsal scene where you can see everyone casually and elegantly doing a straightforward degage/fondu combination, Portman looks so nervous the audience expects she's going to bolt or break down at any second, straining credulity that this would go unnoticed by anyone else or that she would be picked for the lead. In many dance scenes [27:20], she performs with a furrow in her brow--is she psychologically tortured or is she confused and trying to remember how to do the combination? In one scene, there's a head shot of her looking nervous and not spotting, paired with a full body shot of her (presumably body double) confidently doing perfect passe turns, which is pretty physically impossible.
The sensuality and club scenes were sexy and made a darker transformation, but again, it's hard to believe that ~suddenly everything is OK. I thought the sex added to the plot as much as the groping and come-ons did--people seem to be extra defensive for some reason. I liked the feathers growing out of skin as a kind of horrifying, shocking moment. I love the way Lily and Nina work together; Nina was not very sympathetic, but Lily was just so full of life and a bit sarcastic; I thought their relationship was great. I did think it was tasteless that Lily had a tattoo of black wings. 1) Can you be any more obvious 2) It seems pretty dumb and career-ending for a ballerina to get a tattoo there. But anyhow.
The way scratches kept coming up were really chilling and it became a bit of a horror movie at the end that did shock me.
Finally, it passed over ballet as a dance form and made it into a cliché: overworked dancer trying to strive for emotion and compete with other catty dancers. There's shockingly few dance scenes here--I'd say 50-75% of them are closeups of Portman's face and a camera wheeling around her shoulders and upper body, which is not dancing. Ballet has gorgeous lines and this movie doesn't really show any of it, which would be disappointing for dancers. It also doesn't accurately portray Swan Lake. More of a dramatic horror movie showing one deranged woman, rather than anything to do with the artistic endeavors of ballet.