This an invitation to dance into the dark with Natalie Portman in "Black Swan"

At a special screening at Fox Studios, “Black Swan” awed the entire audience into stunned silence.  That lasted but a moment before the room erupted with thunderous applause.  This is certainly Natalie Portman’s year to made a run for Oscar gold.  The film is a glorious visual and visceral achievement.  The film’s imagery is both breath-taking and gut-wrenching.  Feeling very much like a hidden cameras have taken the audience into the private lives of women who put their entire lives on hold for just a moment of elusive fame, “Black Swan” is in turns inviting and repulsive. 

Make no mistake, “Black Swan” is a film consumed with showing the light and the dark-side of ballet.  At its finest, it is magnificent.  But, at its darkest, it is a brutal physical art.  To make those beautiful dances look so effortless, dancers inflict great pain upon them and push themselves to the point of psychological exhaustion – and, in this story, beyond the breaking point. 

In “Black Swan,” Natalie Portman portrays the emotionally-controlled ballerina, Nina, who wants nothing more in life than to dance as the White Swan in the ballet Swan Lake.  But to achieve that coveted role, Nina has to tap into her sexual side in order to play the Black Swan – for the lead must be both sides of a fractured personality.  Striving to be perfect in both roles, Nina’s personal life begins to mirror the dance of Swan Lake.  She is the innocent seduced by power and desire.  Her reality and that which she is driven to portray on stage become so intertwined that they are inseparable and she can no longer distinguish between what is real, what is part of the dance, and what is simply her projections on the world around her.

It is awesome and ferocious to behold.  Nina’s passion and pursuit of perfection fractures her reality.  Watching her crack into a million pieces psychologically is riveting while heart-breaking.  But to watch her dance is a thing of beauty.  In the end, the film will have shocked, dazzled and captivated its audience.  It is not easy to watch, but it is a phenomenal film showing how a gentle spirit is caught up in the lust for infamy.

Co-starring Vincent Cassel as the daring task-master pushing Nina to explore her darkest fantasies, Mila Kunis as Lily, Nina’s sensual rival, Winona Ryder as Beth the aging prima donna ballerina, and Barbara Hershey as Nina’s over-protective mother, the film is a microscopic look into a grueling world where perfection is not just an ambition, it is a way of life.  Directed by Darren Aronofsky, “Black Swan” shimmers under his finely-nuanced approached to the complex layers of fragility and longing encased and fighting for superiority in a tortured ballerina’s body and soul.

“Black Swan” is scheduled for limited release on December 3, 2010. 

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