(2010) Perfection. Achieved once. Ballerina Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman) wakes from her dream of dancing the prologue to Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake, when Rothbart casts his spell upon the white swan, only to enter her nightmare of becoming the black swan.

Her domineering mother Erica (Barbara Hershey), formerly a ballerina (who gave up her career at 28 to have Nina), notices scratches recurring on her daughter's back, and clips her fingernails (the tips of her wings). "Let go!" urges Thomas Leroy (Vincent Cassel), the artistic director.

After an innocent, fragile girl is transformed into a white swan, a prince comes along, whose love can break the bewitchment, but before he can release her, he's seduced by the guileful sensuality of her evil twin, leaving only one escape to freedom. Offering the audience little indication to distinguish hallucination from authenticity, director Darren Aronofsky's surreally operatic, macabre cinema with its horrifically splintered reality (original screenplay by Mark Heyman, Andres Heinz, and John McLaughlin) need only be experienced one time.

Getting off the subway on her way to rehearsal with a New York City ballet company, Nina, attired in white notices a girl in black. Lilly (Mila Kunis), just arrived from San Francisco (or the otherworld), is a new face in the ballet corps. "A new production needs a new Swan Queen," Thomas announces: "But which of you can embody both swans? The white and the black."

After Nina witnessing the company's former prima ballerina Beth Macintyre (Winona Ryder) throwing a tantrum in her dressing room, she takes the star's lipstick tube, applying it to her own lips, followed by other items. Disappointed during Nina's too-controlled dancing of the black swan's coda, Thomas commands: "Seduce us!"

The next morning she goes to see him to plead for the part - "I want to be perfect" - but Thomas informs her that she only fulfills his expectations for the white swan, lacking a willingness to let go, transcendence, and has given the role to Veronica; but when she meekly turns to leave, he asks why she's made no effort to change his mind and embraces her with a kiss - to which she reciprocates with a bite.

Unexpectedly she finds her name posted beneath "Swan Queen"; across her mirror someone has written "WHORE" in lipstick. "What did you do to get this role?" demands Beth. Having said, "The real work will be her metamorphosis into her evil twin" (more "bite"), Thomas points out to Nina Lilly's "imprecise but effortless" movements on stage: "She's not faking it."

Asking her intimately about her life - boyfriends? "Sex? Do you enjoy it?" - Thomas, harping on her frigidity, being weak and cowardly when she must respond passionately to touch to embody her role - "That was me seducing you when it needs to be the other way around" - recommends masturbation. Self-destructive and dangerous, Beth, after submitting to her own "dark impulse," ends up in the hospital, where Nina visits her on occasions.

In addition to the scratches on her back (her mother suspects self-mutilation from the stress), Nina's toes and fingers bleed; blood drips into the bathtub from her imagined self looking down at her underwater. Invited to join Lilly ("You really need to relax"), Nina (wearing a black camisole) disobeys her mother ("This role is destroying you"), for a wild night out - drinking and drugs, juicy cheeseburgers named Tom and Jerry - coming home with her sultry, seductive "blood sister," a black swan tattooed on her back, (or did she just have "a lezzy wet dream"?) before the premier of the performance, only to realize: "She's after me … trying to replace me."

In the midst of horrible hallucinations, Nina ("It's my turn!") takes the stage, completing her transformation into a unique creation. A one-of-an-unkind movie.

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Copyright © 2011 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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