Film review: Black Swan

It's a Gothic melodrama. No, it's a companion piece to The Wrestler. Oh hang on, it's classic body horror in the vein of Cronenberg. But it's Polanski-esque in its exploration of the darkest corners of the mind. And surely it's an unflinching character study about fear and weakness and transcendence, right? Just what is Black Swan?

All of the above descriptors apply to Darren Aronofsky's (Requiem for A Dream, The Fountain, The Wrestler) latest film to some degree. The movie tells the story of fragile mummy's girl Nina (Natalie Portman), who gets cast for the prestigious role of the Swan Queen in a New York ballet company's new production of Swan Lake. In the process of preparing for her role, for which she must excel as both the virginal White Swan (which comes naturally to Nina) and the sensuous Black Swan (which decidedly doesn't), Nina is plagued by nightmarish visions and paranoid fantasies.

Black Swan brings together all the aforementioned elements and sharpens them to a razor's edge to stab its point home. Taken at their face value, a lot of these elements might seem derivative or cliche, but all these techniques are ruthlessly honed by Aronofsky and aimed towards what the film is trying to express. The use of tight, over-the-shoulder camera angles and the constant presence of mirrors are both staples of the horror genre, but here they reinforce Nina's inability to escape her panicky bubble of existence and her crisis of identity (of course, they also serve to make you shit your breeches on several occasions).

Similarly the transformation scenes, in which Nina begins to see herself physically morphing into a swan, owe a debt to the mortification of the flesh seen in some of Cronenberg's best films, and even Clive Barker's Hellraiser. But again, Aronofsky bends this concept to serve his film's specific goals. As such, we see some fairly tired ideas find a new lease of life when bound to a fresh purpose.

Nina's strange hallucinations signpost the growth of her repressed dark side, leading her ever closer to the performance of the Black Swan she so obsessively desires, and ever closer to the brink of madness. When those two roads converge at the end of the movie, it's so cathartic because of the constant tension that Aronofsky has built up throughout.

Black Swan's performances are roundly superb, with Portman the obvious standout. She excels at conveying her character's brittle vulnerability, but really shines as Nina's darker impulses begin to flutter to life. Mila Kunis isn't stretching herself as the Nina's new friend Lily and the liberated yin to Nina's tightly-wound yang, but she's excellently cast and carries an effortless charisma that serves the character well. Similarly, Vincent Cassel's natural sly charm translates perfectly for idealistic but cruel ballet director Thomas. Special mention should also go to Barbara Hershey as Nina's overbearing mother, exposing the character's cloying need to live through her daughter while somehow finding her sympathetic side by the film's end.

So yes, the film is all the things I mentioned at the top of this review. All those things and more. Subtlety has never been Darren Aronofsky's M.O, and Black Swan is no exception. It's gloriously over-the-top, unapologetically theatrical, and hits home with the force and precision of a laser-guided missile. Black Swan isn't out to confound audiences. It's not a brain teaser. It simply concentrates on throwing its every resource behind expressing its ideas (perfection, psychological extremes, absurd dedication, the fracturing of identity) as clearly and as forcefully as possible.