Black Swan is like a conjurer’s trick. It dances in front of you, it moves and shakes, offers distractions and throws up red herrings. And it’s so effective that when all is said and done you’re not really sure what happened. All you know is that, at some point, you’ve been deceived.

Not that Black Swan keeps an entirely straight face throughout its running time. It’s built upon caricature and cliché, and almost burns out audience goodwill with a clutch of risible scenes. But this is an easy film to forgive given some of the craft on display – it’s just a case of whether or not it should be forgiven.

At the centre of the threadbare plot is Natalie Portman’s Nina. An emotionally frigid member of a New York dance company’s corps de ballet, Nina’s opportunity comes when artistic director, Thomas (Vincent Cassel) looks to reinvigorate the business by letting go his aging lead, Beth (Joan Cusack Winona Ryder), and staging a cutting edge production of Swan Lake. After a series of auditions, Nina gets the part.

And so rolls the film’s major plot hole: why would Thomas – desperate to save his ailing company – pick Nina, a dancer who he chastises for not being capable of embracing the duality of the central role? Still, this like everything else is quickly folded into the film’s shape shifting shadow, the audience barely getting a chance to raise a hand and ask the question.

The whole thing rushes along thus, as if the filmmakers were so convinced of the quality of their work that they didn’t think about whether it would hold together under close examination. Nina’s delicate personality is of course put under increasing strain by the lead role, and as the first night approaches she’s in danger of unravelling entirely.

The film’s claustrophobic dedication to its lead character allows director Darren Aronofsky to have a lot of fun with her deteriorating mental state. There are plenty of fantastic freak-out moments, even if some of the more audacious stunts elicit a laugh rather than a yelp.

Aronofsky is coming off his sublime work in The Wrestler, but that film had just one writer whereas Black Swan features three (Mark Heyman, Andres Heinz and John J. McLaughlin), none of whom worked together, and none of whom managed to flesh out a screenplay of any real depth. The Wrestler’s reflective nature seemed to encourage Aronofsky to dial down his own melodramatic tendencies, but in Black Swan they’re back out front, quickly chewing through a film they're meant to enhance.

All the jerkiness, off kilter framing and ripcord editing might have worked on a film of more substance, but combined with the well-prepared set pieces they are the substance, Black Swan’s weaknesses in the area of character being a hurdle too high to jump. Whether you laugh or shit your pants at the invention on display, you’ll leave the cinema barely caring about the caricatures Black Swan attempts to sell as real people.

Nina is the biggest problem, something that – like so much in the film – is cleverly disguised, this time by a bravura performance from Portman. Portman hauls and heaves but Nina is just too slight for you to ultimately care about her. Thomas too is a one-dimensional tyrant, and the less said about the over-egged Beth the better. Nina’s mother also checks in for the clichéd treatment, although she’s another who benefits from the actress tasked with playing her (Barbara Hershey). With all this neurosis and venom on display, Mila Kunis performs the important function of allowing the audience into the film, her take on Lily, an open-minded ballerina from San Francisco, being as good for us as she is for Nina (kinda).

But that’s Black Swan: plenty of craft and not much art. It does so many things so well – the ballet rituals, the dance sequences, the Gondry-like special effects, Clint Mansell’s fulsome score – and then just recklessly shakes it up and pours it out on the pan, the result being impressive but flavourless. There’s no doubt this is an enjoyable piece of cinema, but Black Swan is more pulpy melodrama than deep psychological thriller, and should be approached with that in mind.


I say: You’d be better off seeing a production of the actual ballet. Black Swan is able filmmaking, but lacks the depth required to make it a true classic.

See it for: The little things. There’s so much proficiency on display in a technical sense that the film is certainly never uninteresting.