Ballet is not exactly something I get too excited about, especially if there's a film about it. If it weren't for the fact that Vincent Cassel stars in it I wouldn't have thought about watching this film at all. However, I would be lying if I said the trailer didn't interest me, but how many trailers have advertised a film falsely? A lot. So I wasn't going to risk having to sit through a chick flick ballet film that had been disguised as some sort of dark emotional journey that the main character Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman) goes through to fit into the role of the white and black swans of swan lake. Vincent Cassel plays Thomas Leroy, the head of the Ballet institution and Nina's teacher of some sorts. He puts in a very good performance as the manipulative mentor, as he uses sex as a tool to draw out Nina's Black Swan. She already personifies all the qualities of the White Swan, and as she makes progress toward finding her dark side, problems arise. She initially has a disorder where she scratches herself obsessively and on top of that she has some sort of eating disorder, and as she makes progress in the role of Swan Queen these disorders spiral out of control and she starts to hallucinate. The arrival of Lily (Mila Kunis) doesn't help either, as her style of dancing is just what Nina needs to emulate if she is to dance the Black Swan; and the hate that her dance role model Beth MacIntyre (Winona Ryder) starts to feel for Nina for pushing her to retirement by taking the limelight puts her under extreme pressure.
Brilliantly dark film-making by Darren Aronofsky. I enjoyed it thoroughly due to it's intensity and... I don't know...fucked up-ness? Fantastic film. 4 and a half stars.
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