Get 'Em While They're... In Limbo Between Theaters And DVD

A while ago I watched a documentary on the dancers of the Paris Opera Ballet. I learned that, like film editors, a ballerina’s best work is that which appears to be effortless, flowing, flawless. The audience must never see past the impeccable exterior to the harsh, painful, mentally and physically exhausting work that goes into the art of an unadulterated expression of someone else’s vision.

However, the lifestyle of a ballerina, unlike that of a film editor, lends its self beautifully to psycho-sexual melodramas starring the likes of Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis.

Nina (Portman) is a hard-working mommy’s-girl whose personality is reflected in the tight wad of a bun that clings to the back of her neck like a swollen tick. Her mental stability thrives on perfection… too bad she was never told that nobody is perfect. She is cast as the Swan Queen by the sleazy choreographer Thomas-with a silent “S”-Leroy (Vincent Cassel) whose buzzard-like nose indicates Portman isn’t the only one metamorphosing into the bird that most closely resembles their personality.

But what appears to be the role of a lifetime becomes a paranoid mental coup once the daringly sinful dancer Lilly (Mila Kunis) enters the scene. While Nina gracefully embraces the pretty and pure “white swan”, the Swan Queen’s darker personality, “the black swan” is right up Lilly’s alley. As only one woman must dance both parts, Thomas decides to give Nina a lesson on loosening up, and no, he doesn’t mean that in the traditional choreographic sense.

Nina is unable to acknowledge her repressed desires, fears, and passions and instead grips that which she can control so desperately that her fingers bleed- literally. Eventually, with the provocation of jealousy and a little help from Lilly, her inner darkness bubbles to the surface in the form of inky feathers that send her soaring into the piths of a mental meltdown. Being trapped behind her eyes, somewhere in the unhinged corners of her mind, we go right along for the ride.

Even for those of you who, like me, need a bit of brushing up on Russian ballets and their subplots, it is fairly obvious that Nina is the Swan Queen in much the same way that Meryl Streep is Virginia Woolf in “The Hours” or that Steve Carell is Noah in “Evan Almighty”. Ballet has that sensation to it that lends its self exceptionally well to third-degree melodrama. Slap on a thick layer of insanity, and you’ve got yourself one mean theatrical sandwich.

It is like Portman is a ballerina and we are in her head, looking helplessly out as she skillfully spins faster than lightening. The world seems hazy and dizzying but never does she falter or stumble. Effortlessly- or so she would have it seem- she (and the film editor too) dances with the audience until the world is so blurred, we no longer know what reality is. If Nina Sayers is the Swan Queen, Natalie Portman is no Nina Sayers.