Natalie Portman is too, too good in a tutu as the tortured ballerina of “Black Swan.” Giving one of the best performances of this year, the 29-year-old actress transforms her body into a classical dancer’s as completely as she enters the psyche of a young female artist on the verge. “The Wrestler”‘s intense director Darren Aronofsky, working from a script credited to three writers, creates a character-driven horror thriller that could hardly be more Kafkaesque. But here, the agonizing metamorphosis unfolds amid the deceptive beauty of an elite New York City ballet company. Its stage is either a haunted house or a minefield of the mind for Portman’s protagonist Nina Sayers, who literally begins to embody the dual lead roles of “Swan Lake”‘s naive Swan Princess and wicked Black Swan.
Is she possessed supernaturally, psychologically or creatively? Aronofsky leaves the final interpretation to the audience. And in a brilliant blur of old and new art, he uses the character archetypes of Tchaikovsky’s “Swan Lake” to tell an engrossing, contemporary drama.
