Oh the perils of stage. It's a recurring theme in film, the evils of show business and the price paid for ones art (think The Red Shoes or All That Jazz). Drawing on that rich cinematic heritage, director Darren Aronofsky (Requiem For A Dream, The Wrestler) does what he does best – extrudes a dark, paranoid tale of drive and delusion in examining the cost of addiction and attaining perfection.

Here that is the desire to dance. It's all that Nina (Natalie Portman) has ever known and if her suffocating stage-mother (Barbara Hershey) has her way, it's all she will ever know. When given a chance to take the lead in a new production of Swan Lake, a role that has her playing the innocent White Swan as well as the sensuous and sinister Black Swan, she is forced to confront a newly awakened dark side to satisfy her addiction to perfection. The production's director (a demanding and forceful Vincent Cassel) is happy to exploit a raft of troubled emotion, pitting Nina against fellow dancer Lily (Mila Kunis), a protegée who is hooked by the possibility of assuming Nina's crown. When the two forge an unlikely friendship, matters turn from disturbing to frightening.

Aronofsky's brilliance is on show from the moment the film opens. He quickly builds an air of tension without revealing his hand: madness is in the air but is it Nina, her mother, or Lily who is truly crazed? Quite possibly all three, but we're not entirely sure why, or by how much. As this tension escalates to fever pitch, Aronofsky's visual flair has seldom been so in tune with subject material as it is here. Black Swan is mesmerising to watch, not only in terms of extraordinary cinematography and set design but also for a raft of stunning performances led by Portman. In wrestling with her inner demons, naivete is corrupted as innocence gives way to treachery. Heady stuff. Black Swan is more than a movie with bite, it's a scorching tour de force.

// COLIN FRASER

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