Black Swan

Having been a ballet student in younger days, I was persuaded to go and see the movie "Black Swan", starring Natalie Portman. Although the ballet scenes were well done, the rest of the movie left me cold. Portman wears the same pained expression on her face for most of the time, except during one scene where she is persuaded to indulge in alcohol and drugs, and has a whiny little girl voice. In this visually dark and gothic horror story, the lines between fantasy and reality are so well blurred at times it is quite difficult to realise which is which. Nina (her character) is seriously disturbed and pyschologically manipulated by both the lecherous director of the ballet and her domineering mother, who gave up her career as a ballerina to bring up her daughter. The characters are very two dimensional, and it is impossible to warm to any of them. In her dancing, Nina never manages to show that spark of seductive passion that the director has called for to give life to the character of Odile, the Black Swan and daughter of the evil enchanter Von Robart, but she is certainly gripped by madness. In the final scenes, we realise that she has stabbed herself whilst fantasising that she is stabbing her key rival, and as the blood spreads across her abdomen through Odette's white tutu, we do not know whether she lives or dies; merely that she is calmly satisfied that her performance was 'perfect'. Portman is to be congratulated for bringing her dancing to such a high level, but whether the rest of her performance is worthy of an Oscar remains to be seen.