Black Swan

Now that's a visceral experience.

I enjoyed 127 Hours. It had a lot going for it. But ultimately it was saying relatively little exceptionally well.

This is a story which throws all the cinematic tricks at you, which makes you follow intensely a character who is in nearly every shot of the movie, who makes you come out feeling as if you've just been through the whole ordeal she has. But also feels as if it will stay with you, because it was about something.

What is that something: obsession, discipline, repression. The ability of your self to put you through intense pain.

That sentence should be the other way round but it feels right that way. I'll try and have a think why that is.

I've just watched this film. Came out pumped, playing The National full blast and going through a buzzing Friday night in Soho as if the people weren't really there.

Although half of me was worried that they were looking me. I felt slightly out of control. A little like Nina in this film.

And it took me almost all the way back to calm down.

It's a film that spends a lot of time looking at pain. The first act feels quite a lot like The Wrestler. The same obsession with bodies which are simultaneously being worshiped and destroyed. That sense that if your body is the vehicle for what you want to do then you make it suffer. You're both completely dependent on your body and yet strangely divorced from it. Able to bring pain upon it so that it does what you want it to do.

But while for Mickey Rourke's character it was only the body that suffered that kind of concerted pain (his mind was taking plenty of hits but not in a controlled or entirely self-inflicted way), Natalie Portman's character is doing the same thing to mind.

I'm not going to give spoilers although to be honest I'm not sure there's much that's not revealed by the trailer. The trailer suggests it's a horror film but while it is undoubtedly horrific in places you realise early on that this is a film in which what she is doing to herself is far more metaphorical. The confusion lies in that, like her, you are unable to distinguish between what is definitely real and what could be but might not be.

After a Red Shoes esque opening with ballet dancers becoming their characters, it takes a surprisingly gritty turn. The handheld cameras, slightly scratchy sound and dull colours of her world with her mum surprised me after the high style of the trailer and I liked it. For a film that is in many ways about suffocation, it lets you breathe at the beginning.

And from that you get a good sense of her character. What's wrong with her is explained quite explicitly by her maestro Vincent Cassel. Her pursuit of perfect technique has left her frigid, solitary, awkward in company. She can play virginial better than anyone else. But she cannot also be sensual, seductive.

We see why. She has an obsessive single mum who feels that she never got to be a great ballerina because she got pregnant and is determined to see her little girl go one better. That means early nights and hard work. But it also most definitely means remaining a little girl. No sex. Just being tucked in in a room full of fluffy teddies. Pinks and whites. Nothing black.

Setting up so heavily the motif of black vs white makes your set design easier. Vincent Cassel's flat is laughable in its obsession with this. But it's a simple effective way of building the idea and letting us know whether Nina is turning black or staying white.

I have a feeling that there are no black faces in this film. There are certainly none among the cast of the ballet. I imagine that's reasonably accurate of the ballet world, moreover I think putting Natalie Portman up against a black character, even a small one, would have distracted it from its motif. It would have complicated the dynamics in a way that would have taken us out of Natalie Portman's increasingly crazed head.

I feel like there's lots more to say but I want to say just two things. Firstly Mila Kunis is very good in a role that I think gets under noticed. She plays two roles really, she's half of Nina's black swan. And she's a girl called Lily. And it's as Lily that I think she does something very important. In a very stylised flick, she plays normal in a way that both feels it but doesn't interrupt the feel of the film. The fact that everytime we see her we're not quite sure whether she is the relatively normal Lily or the black swan helps to keep that edge. But I think it's hard to give off the warmth she does in a film like this and remain likeable. I think it's exactly the kind of performance that makes a film and never gets noticed. It's not as exceptional a piece of work as Natalie Portman's and doesn't the deserve the massive acclaim that Natalie's correctly picking up. But it's the kind of role that makes sure a movie is more than just an actress's tour de force.

Secondly, there's a sex scene in her which really feels dynamic, erotic and absolutely part of it. You don't get many of them. Broadband and the total accessibility of porn has killed off the token soft core scene to fill out a movie but in a way I hoped it would make sex scenes work better because they're no longer partly as use as porn. They can be more erotic than that. Here it works and it works because it's happening to a character's whose head you're inhabiting.

Final note, I watched it in a freezing cinema, (i'm still really freezing) and with a desperate need to go to the toilet through most of it. I think that added to the experience as it made me feel suitably on edge. Also I can't imagine seeing this on a small screen, not least for the surround sound. There are a couple times when it feels like Vincent Cassell is talking behind you and I nearly looked round for his approval. This film really got under my skin.