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Film

Review: Black Swan

Thin pickings for superb Portman

January 21, 2011 11:33
Natalie Portman: Her ability conveys the vulnerability of her character and makes for a fine performance

ByJonathan Foreman, Jonathan Foreman

3 min read

The brilliant director Darren Aranofsky first came to notice with a low-budget independent film called Pi about a paranoid mathematical genius pursued by Chasidic numerologists. But it was with the terrific, eye-poppingly inventive but harrowing drugs film Requiem for a Dream that he made his reputation.

Since then, Aranofsky's work has ranged from the slated science fiction effort The Fountain to The Wrestler which won a Best Actor Oscar for Mickey Rourke.

Aranofsky's Black Swan is a typically unpredictable foray into the world of ballet. Like its predecessors, it is largely about the mental and physical price of obsession. Unfortunately, though it shares some of Requiem's visual virtuosity it also exaggerates its faults including a grim relentlessness. The result, though visually stunning and brilliantly cast, is an initially disturbing psychological thriller that turns into a lurid, increasingly absurd melodrama. At times it is so overwrought it verges on camp.

It is a shame because Black Swan features a superb performance by Natalie Portman whose ability to convey vulnerability suits this role much better than many of her recent efforts. She also looks every bit the ballerina. In a physical transformation akin to De Niro's for Raging Bull and Tom Hanks's in Castaway, she has thinned herself to the point of bony emaciation.