Nov

29

BLACK SWAN

Directed by Darren Aronofsky Reviewed by Marion DS Dreyfus

With Natalie Portman, Vincent Cassel, Mila Kunis, Barbara Hershey, Winona Ryder

Having for so long been in a market mindset, and the stock market has for a while now been consumed with the extrusive wonderments or lacunae of “black swans”— irregular outcroppings of more traditional or conventional events, sales, trends—I more than halfway expected this beautiful if gory and unexpectedly sexed-up film of a ballerina fighting to be Queens of the Swans (as it were) to have some sort of financial edge. I waited until the last seconds to come to the obvious conclusion that, no, there is little in the way of market tips or hunts here.

But all is not lost. Aronofsky has created a drama that holds one’s interest from position one to position umpteen. There is a gorgeous ‘turnout’ in the luminescent Natalie portman’s demeanor, acting and first-rate ballet. Unlike an earlier 2010 favorite, MAO’S LAST DANCE, which concerned a Chinese male dancert overcoming vast negatives to succeed in the American ballet pantheon, and the popular Shirley MacLaine/Anne Bancroft 1977 dance lenser, THE TURNING POINT, BLACK SWAN keeps a steely focus on the bleeding agony of practice, coping with the (yes) casting couch mentality of becoming prima ballerina in any production, the rack of toe shoes, and the unrelenting pain of the committed artistic life.

Vincent Cassel as dance impresario/master is not above compromising his lustrous stars, importuning them without cease. Women barely past 30 are unwillingly ‘retired,’ like it or not, as happens to the still-immaculate Wynona Ryder. And stars are often stellar because their hovering-helicopter parents (Barbara Hershey, here, a Lady MacBeth of manipulation and fanatic I-coulda-been-someone-if-I-hadn’t–had-you) chivvy them day and night to keep them on the very straight and narrow. Not to mention the Machiavellian designs of stop-at-nothing competitors who do not scruple to drug, undress, delay and disarm their prima prey. Adding to the eye-filling scenarios are the delusional moments Portman experiences that take the gorgeous fever of performance into a whole other realm of strangeness.

Transcendent scenes of Swan Lake, of course, even for a reviewer–full disclosure–who saw the Bolshoi in Moscow perform it two years ago. Caution: There is some raunchy girl-on-girl material. And funky backstage times in Lincoln Center, our own back yard (where we practiced with a Lincoln Center staffer when we were rehearsing an Off Broadway play, The Invitation, some years ago. The flamingo-like dancers in their starchy-fluffy tutus would enter the elevator in which we–diminished and miniaturized–rode, and would chirp and flutter, oblivious of our height-challenged personhood right next to them. Ah, fame).

Industry scuttlebutt is that Portman is Oscar bait already. All this, plus sublime Tchaikovsky?


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