19) BLACK SWAN

Director: Darren Aronofsky
Stars: Natalie Portman, Vincent Cassel, Mila Kunis, Barbara Hershey, Winona Ryder
Year: 2010
Rating: R

Over sixteen years ago, when I saw The Professional in a theater featuring "child actor" Natalie Portman, I remember thinking that this gal was an amazing talent. That sentiment has been echoed in my head, off and on, over the years - but while watching Black Swan it practically reverberated in my brain like a gong. This stylish, intense, often get-under-your-skin creepy psychological thriller about a young ballerina's total devotion to her craft is completely deserving of its Oscar nominations (especially for Portman) - and one of the most effective suspense thrillers I've seen in quite some time.

Portman plays Nina Sayers, a young ballerina in New York City who lives for her art. She's very successful with her current company, but has never had a lead role ... until she learns that the company's next production will be an avant garde production of Swan Lake, and that the company's usual lead dancer, Beth MacIntyre (Winona Ryder) will not be dancing the White Swan.

This leaves the coveted position open to all the better dancers in the company, and to Nina it means a chance to dance the role of a lifetime. She competes for the role - and, in fact, the artistic director of the new show, Thomas Leroy (Vincent Cassel) thinks she would make a perfect White Swan ... but while he feels Nina can dance the virginal White Swan role, it's the Black Swan - the White Swan's alter ego, who is much darker, sensual and dangerous - that Leroy feels she cannot play. Worse, Nina finds her strongest competition in another member of the company, Lily (Mila Kunis), who herself seems the personification of the darker, dangerous Black Swan. Leroy ends up giving the role to Nina, but almost with an unspoken proviso that if she cannot get into the mindset of the Black Swan, if she cannot dance the Black Swan with equal conviction, she may lose the lead.

He encourages Nina to follow her darker side, to act on her more feral and sexual urges, and as she does so Nina starts experiencing odd visions, or dreams that leave her alternately shaking with fear or sexually aroused. Being stifled and babied by the overprotective mother she still lives with (Barbara Hershey) - an ex-ballerina herself - Nina soon finds herself plunging into the world and mindset of the Black Swan; a mindset she may or may not be able to escape from again.

This is a hard film to describe in a review, but suffice to say that watching it is a riveting experience. Portman is certainly Oscar-worthy as Nina Sayers, a character you grow to care very much about, even as you wonder if she is either the victim of supernatural forces or just going mad. Even more than her other recent work, here Portman has genuinely matured into an actress of real power, in a very adult role that should have nay-sayers forgetting Queen Amidala completely.

Black Swan is a work of art about the world of art - and what artists (dancers in particular, here), are willing to go through, and give up, to reach the pinnacle of their success. Chilling and sensual and just damned good filmmaking, with an astonishing performance from Natalie Portman the tent-pole that holds it all together. ***** - Reel Must-See