Black Swan Will Grip You

by Michelle Miles

It’s no wonder Natalie Portman won a Golden Globe for her performance in Black Swan Sunday night. It’s one of those movies that stick with you and maybe not in the best way. More of a twisted/psycho way.

I used to dance en pointe and so I’m always interested in seeing movies that portray the dance. But Black Swan isn’t your mother’s Swan Lake. And it’s certainly not for the faint of heart. We went into the movie with expectations that it was going to be weird and we weren’t disappointed.

Black Swan is the kind of movie teenagers sneak into (and did) because there is “strong sexual content.” And indeed there is that (though not a lot of flesh is flashed). Oftentimes eroticism can happen on the screen without showing a breast of any other female body part. This movie does that. It gives you images and pulls you into Nina’s mind. We’re just along for the ride, watching the things she does in her quest to be perfect in the dance.

Nina’s life is ruled by the ballet. She wants the lead role in Swan Lake which means she’ll be dancing as the white swan and the black swan. (Perhaps I should mention here the story of Swan Lake. Here it is in a nutshell and the story as per the movie: A beautiful young woman is cursed into the body of a swan—the Swan Queen—and the only way it can be broken is by the love of a prince. But her evil twin sister, the black swan, seduces him instead, leaving the swan queen trapped. To gain her freedom, she plunges into the lake, and drowns.) The choreographer is convinced she’s perfect as the white swan, but thinks she lacks something as the seductive, sexy black swan.

Isn’t that always the way?

Newcomer Lily (Mila Kunis), though, is the embodiment of the black swan. Sexy, seductive, wild girl. Nina and Lily forge a rivalry and a strange friendship and Nina begins to think she’s trying to replace her in the ballet as the Swan Queen.

It’s this paranoia and the drive to be perfect that forces Nina’s OCD to come forward full-force. Even her over-protective mother, played by Barbara Hershey, has a difficult time controlling her.

Black Swan is the story of a woman who drives herself to madness while trying to be perfect. It’s a dark and twisty place. I don’t know I could recommend it without preparing you for the dark and twisty. Don’t go into it thinking it’s a warm and fuzzy ballet movie, because it isn’t. What it is, though, is definitely a movie that sticks with you long after you walk out of the theater.



Michelle Miles writes romance, drinks coffee, and tries hard to stay away from the dark and twisty. For for information about her books, visit her website.