A first-rate thriller on the life of a ballerina

Film review: The Black Swan

MANILA, Philippines - I have not seen a psychological thriller in a long, long time, much less saw one based on a character from the performing arts.

The last ballet film I saw was The Turning Point and its ballet star, Leslie Browne, danced in Manila in the ’80s to star in an Alice Reyes production of The Nutcracker.

When I saw Browne dance in the Reyes version of The Nutcracker, I felt total disappointment as a balletomane. Her dancing didn’t sparkle the way she did in The Turning Point.

Then I realized films can do wonders to a dancer in bad shape by way of special effects and here I woke up accepting the great divide between art and reality.

Watching Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan — my first ballet film in a long, long time — I was able to revisit scenes from my ballet-going days. My favorite Black Swan in the ’80s were Japan’s Yoko Morishita and our very own Maniya Barredo. In the ’90s, Lisa Macuja would emerge as another formidable Black Swan with Anna Villadolid as the local epitome of the White Swan.

After the first sneak preview of Black Swan at the SM theaters, I shouted Bravo. Finally, I was at the edge of my seat rooting for my ballerina haunted by hallucinations in what looks like a familiar case of paranoia. It was the same scary viewing experience I felt some years back while watching Polanski’s The Tenant with Ricky Lo and watching Audrey Hepburn in Wait Until Dark much earlier.

The truth is Black Swan is not just for balletomanes; it offers many insights on the life of ballet dancers that non-ballet lovers can easily connect with. The rehearsal scenes, the opening night scenarios not to mention the backstage intrigues were beautifully captured in the Black Swan.

The overbearing ballerina’s mother (Barbara Hershey) and her dedicated dancer-daughter (Natalie Portman) reminded me of scenes from Dominga Street in Pasay City in the ancestral house of Maniya Barredo.

I saw the ballet director (Vincent Cassel) in the many ballet masters I watched at the CCP and Meralco theaters. I have not seen true-to-life Black Swans in Manila’s ballet world although I heard stories of ballet teachers dousing lubricants on the ballet stage so that their rival students would fall flat on their faces on opening night.

That part where Portman fell with an embarrassing thud on stage in the White Swan scene I actually saw in the media preview of Don Q where the danseur failed to catch the ballerina in her crucial dive and nearly smashed her face on the plateful of soup of the country’s leading critics.

Ballet nostalgia aside, Black Swan is a superb film more engrossing than The Turning Point. The music of Clint Mansell with eerie variations from the music of Tchaikovsky evoked tensions and fear on and off ballet stage. The screenplay of Mark Heyman, Andres Heinz and John McLaughlin is so riveting and it showed they are familiar with both tender and wicked scenes from the ballet world.

The cinematography of Matthew Libatique captured the beauty, excitement, uncertainties and loneliness in the ballet world.

The actors are the main attraction of this film. Cassel as the ballet director has both the genius and instinct of a driven ballet master. Mila Kunis as Lily the rival swan was both sweet and scheming while Winona Ryder as Beth MacIntyre the retired ballerina gave us a glimpse on how it is when dancers are past their time and the adoring audiences are gone.

I must admit Portman as the Black Swan captured the essence of the character of the ballerina. How I wish other actors get obsessed with performing artists and duplicate Portman’s feat in the Black Swan.

On the whole, director Darren Aronofsky gave us first-rate thriller with a rare glimpse of the untold stories of ballerinas.

Black Swan is a must-watch movie during the weekend.