Darren Aronofsky and Natalie Portman bring grace and depth to a tale of an artist's struggle...

A decade in the making, Darren Aronofsky’s latest picture, Black Swan, is a psychological drama set in the world of the New York ballet. A contemporary story of an artist struggling to attain perfection, Natalie Portman’s Nina is gentle, graceful and prone to intermittent tears. However, when artistic director Thomas Leroy (Vincent Cassel) decides to do away with veteran ballerina Beth (Winona Ryder) and chooses Nina to play the Swan Queen, he triggers a mental struggle within her as she is forced to uncover impulsive tendencies in order to play both the White and Black Swan in a new staging of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake.

Fighting against the flirtatious encouragements of Leroy and new girl Lily (Mila Kunis) who are both attuned to their sensuous side, the intense pressure not only causes Nina to come out in a rash, but she has to face up to bouts of nausea, panic attacks, paranoia and hallucinations. The question we are forced to confront is whether an artist can ever truly become at one with art.

To help us on this journey are two strong performances by Barbara Hershey as Nina’s ex-ballerina mother who is jealous and obsessive about her daughter, and Ryder’s mentally unstable Beth, who provides us with a glimpse of who Nina may become once her career eventually begins to fade.

On the production side, there are the usual wardrobe clichés of light and dark clothing to represent a character’s mental state, whilst the dance choreography is breathtaking both in the way it is shot in a disorienting manner using a handheld camera, but also in the pacing of the sequences. The music, as you would expect, is blanketed by Tchaikovsky’s classic score which is interwoven with Clint Mansell’s more suspenseful elements to create a haunting environment where the music to Swan Lake follows Nina around, inhabiting her world and often suffocating her in the process.

Whilst this production, more than most, relies on the collective efforts of a talented cast and crew to meld all the elements together into a cohesive art form, the spotlight will invariably fall on the performance of Natalie Portman. Whilst at times she has the air of a young child about to cry at any given moment, her dedication to the physicality and intricacies of the role are apparent in her portrayal of Nina’s self-doubt and single-minded focus on creating a perfect performance. Very few actresses have the breadth to embody, if you like, both the White and Black Swan, whilst ten months of ballet training mean that ninety percent of what we see on screen is Portman herself rather than a double. Despite having trained in ballet as a child, the role of Swan Queen is physically demanding, as is ballet generally, which makes her performance all the more astonishing, especially in the subtle differences she brings to her relationships with Leroy, Lily, and her mother.

Despite there being the odd gripe about the manner in which Nina is chosen by Leroy, and a couple of unlikely moments in her acquaintanceship with Lily when they go out to a bar, Black Swan is a tremendously energetic film that will leave you feeling both breathless and wishing for an encore.

Black Swan is released on the 21st January 2011

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