Black Swan

A film set in a ballet company in New York. Nina is technically flawless. She gets every step right, takes no risks, and has been in the same company for years. Swan Lake is to be staged in the new season. The director wants one dancer to play both the white and the black swan. Nina is ideal for the white swan. She is not for the black, and she starts forcing herself to get the part. A new dancer arrives. Lily is relaxed, careless, and does on stage what Nina cannot. From there the film is a dissolution. A mirror, fingernails, a wound on the back, her relationship with her mother, and images that keep separating from reality. What the narrative is interested in is not ballet but control: Nina's life is entirely arranged, and the film treats perfectionism as an illness. The mother line is the most uncomfortable part. She carries her daughter's career as the continuation of the one she lost. The narrative works in the language of horror. A reflection moving independently, feathers under the skin and the transformation are genre elements outright. It was shot handheld and largely on a fine film stock; the image is deliberately rough. The music was adapted from Tchaikovsky's score, which put the composer outside the award categories. Natalie Portman won an Academy Award for the part. How much of the dancing was hers became a subject of argument after release. Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis, Vincent Cassel, Barbara Hershey and Winona Ryder are in the cast. Darren Aronofsky directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes psychological thrillers and genre mixing. Who it is not for: anyone disturbed by self-harm; the film shows it closely and repeatedly.