Black Swan

Director: Darren Aronofsky
Starring: Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis, Vincent Cassell
Time Out rating:

Trust Darren Aronofsky to make the dainty, ultra-refined art of classical ballet appear as physically gruelling as cracking rocks with a pick-axe. Black Swan is a head-spinning, unabashedly hysterical psychodrama set in the back-biting world of New York ballet and looks at the extreme lengths to which some people will go to attain perfection in their chosen field. The director has noted that this new work – the opening film at the 67th Venice Film Festival and part of the main competition – was born out of the same premise as his 2008 Golden Lion winner The Wrestler, and that would go some way to explaining why – structurally – they are the exact same movie: a grainily-shot, meticulously detailed chronicle of a single character’s punishing descent into a personal hell.

Coming across like a Lars Von Trier fanboy who set out to fuse The Red Shoes with Repulsion, Aronofsky introduces us to Nina (Natalie Portman) a hardworking, happy-go-lucky dancer with dreams of lead roles and an all-round plucky outlook on her future prospects. He then, over 103 riveting minutes, proceeds to smash them to smithereens in bravura fashion. Portman gives it her all as the Mummy’s-girl dancing queen whose life takes a turn for the clinically insane when she’s grudgingly cast in the lead of Swan Lake, a part which requires two emotionally oppositional styles of dance. She’s fine tackling the florid, graceful White Swan part, but slinking into the role of the Black Swan – which calls for bile and throbbing sexuality – is just not happening for her, so slimy artistic director Thomas (Vincent Cassell – shambling, but it works) takes it upon himself to bellow inspirational slogans so she might find the ‘dark impulse’ which will nudge her across the boundary from the merely great to the perfect. This passive hectoring slowly mutates into sexual goading, guided by his belief that to really understand a part, one must live elements of it.

As Nina starts to take leave of her sanity and slip into paranoiac frenzy, Aronofsky charts the changes to her disposition and physical shape. Black Swan confirms the director's Cronenbergian fascination with the limits of the human body – both external and internal – amplifying the sound of bones clicking, nails snapping and muscles stretching to stomach-churning levels while constantly honing in on grazes and open wounds.

Some viewers may find themselves put off by the melodramatic tone. Barbara Hershey as Nina’s smothering mother doesn’t do the film any favours in the credibility stakes: initially all smiles, hugs and words of encouragement, just when Aronofsky needs more ammo with which to bombard his lead, she mutates into a crazed, over-protective harridan who resents her daughter’s spell in the limelight.

But, quibbles with its tenuous connection to reality aside, this is a thrilling slab of old-fashioned Hollywood pulp.

Black Swan opens in Tokyo on May 13