Black Swan

In 2010, Aronofsky presented his latest film, Black Swan, at the Venice Film Festival, where he had won the Golden Lion two years previously with The Wrestler. According to the director, these were companion films about self-destructive obsessions in upper- and lower-class culture. After Oscar nominations for Ellen Burstyn (Requiem for a Dream, 2000) and for Mickey Rourke and Marisa Tomei (The Wrestler), Aronofsky now pushes Natalie Portman to great heights as a ballet dancer who has the ambition of playing a double leading role in Swan Lake in New York’s Lincoln Centre at the cost of her predecessor (Winona Ryder) and competitor (Mila Kunis). She is already technically perfect as the White Swan and, spurred on by her choreographer (the French actor Vincent Cassel), she goes looking for the darker sexuality of the Black Swan. What starts as a ballet thriller turns into a psychological horror film. The virtuoso and dislocating camerawork is accompanied by film music based on Tchaikovsky's music.