Black Swan

A witchy brew of madness and cunning, Black Swan tells the story of a ballerina who aches, with battered feet and an increasingly crowded head, to break out of the corps. Played by Natalie Portman in a smashing, bruising, wholly committed performance, the young dancer, Nina, looks more like a child than a woman, her flesh as undernourished as her mind. When she goes to bed at night, a nearby jewelry box tinkling music from Swan Lake, a crowd of stuffed animals watches over her, longtime companions that – as Nina and this dementedly entertaining film grow more unhinged – begin to look more like jailers than friends.

Crammed with twins – lookalikes, mirrored images, doppelgängers – the story follows that of the Swan Lake ballet in broad, gradually warped strokes. It opens with the artistic director of a fictional New York ballet company, Thomas (Vincent Cassel), announcing that the new season will begin with a ‘visceral and real’ version of that old favourite. To that end he dumps his prima ballerina, Beth (Winona Ryder), and picks Nina to dance the dual role of the swan queen (an enchanted woman in bird form) and her villainous black twin. But as the pressure builds, things fall apart, or Nina does. She stumbles out of a spin and begins scratching at her skin. One day she strips a piece from her finger as lightly as if she were peeling a banana.

Part tortured-artist drama, Black Swan looks like a tony art-house entertainment. (Hey, there’s Lincoln Center!) But what gives it a jolt is its giddy, sometimes sleazy exploitation-cinema savvy.

– Manohla Dargis, The New York Times