On the pile since it was released and probably eventually inevitable despite my abiding dislike of Darren Aronofsky's efforts (with the singular exception of The Wrestler (2008)). Likely prompted by the confected conflict around Rachel Cusk's portrait of Natalie Portman. Mark Heyman, Andrés Heinz and John McLaughlin were responsible for the screenplay. It's a breaking-bad fever dream made like these blokes saw Mulholland Drive (2001) and thought they could do it better on the East Coast.
For reasons unexplained and unexplored white, virginal, uptight, perfectionist Portman wants the lead role in a contemporary/modernised production of the ballet Swan Lake (1875) in NYC. Vincent Cassel, in a huge climb down from his efforts in (for instance) Read My Lips (2001), plays the genius, womanising auteur who only has one thing to say: she needs to get more black. He encourages west-coast dancer Mila Kunis to help out with that through insinuation and competition while the film's auteurs deployed faded star Winona Ryder and mother Barbara Hershey as exemplars of failure. It is earnest and utterly humourless, mostly an entirely stock bitchkrieg.
Whether this pressure-cooker approach (also seen in Whiplash (2014)) actually yields better performances or just lawsuits is not the point. (At least here not all is technique.) Prolific cinematographer Matthew Libatique's camerawork is tight and jittery, often occluding the performance failures by, for instance, only showing the top half of Portman's dancing. CGI covered up a bit more. The body horror soon became trying. Generally tedious and completely ridiculous.
Roger Ebert: three-and-a-half stars. Like Dana Stevens I struggle to engage with Portman; she's my model of Deb Olin Unferth's fake human robot. Apparently the choreography was conventional; clearly Aronofsky had no interest in ballet as an art form and many other activities (such as selling ice cream) would have functioned just as well. Unlike Stephanie Zacharek I only started laughing in the last ten minutes or so. Dennis Lim: it's a (camp?) comedy, "a schizoid piece of high-minded trash". Showgirls (1995)-adjacent. "Aronofsky ... just loves a freak show."
