Seduction, Bloody Ballerina Toes, with the ambiance of Russian Ark | Black Swan

So i walked in, ready to sit down and look at pretty costumes for just over an hour of my evening.  I walked out shocked by the depth of the story and just how far Aronofsky took us down the rabbit hole with Black Swan.  I’ll do my best for no spoilers, which isn’t terribly hard for a film that left you in nearly as much clarity as The Shining and Russian Ark.

At the beginning of the film you are introduced to Natalie Portman as Nina Sayers, who at first glance you may guess is still a teenager by dress, style, and attitude.  Through the course of the course of the film i still haven’t the faintest idea how she got to where she is, just a sense what drives her.  There are tens of theories one could draw about the why’s of madness, but they are never quite as interesting as just watching the mad.

We get a couple of other stars in the film, Mila Kunis as Lily and Vincent Cassel as Thomas Leroy, who are the perfect pair to taunt and tease.  Together they set our “Little Princess” on a path of self discovery with only one of two outcomes…perfection or complete self destruction (yep, the movie really was that deep, i swear!!!).  Also cast a fantastic Winona Ryder as Beth MacIntyre as the “retiring” star ballerina.  After all of these years it’s amazing to see her with all of the passion and fire as in Heathers when outside of the kegger when she lets Heather #1 have it.  Unfortunately we only get about 15 minutes total of the Veronica awesomeness, but it’s enough to make me smile. 

The costumes were beautiful, but those girls are way to skinny!!!  I think it may have been what kept me on edge the entire film, waiting for some moment of anorexia or bulimia hysterics…which i guess looking back we did get a bit of, but in the moment they felt so perfect and natural they did not standout.  Odd how you can be on the edge of your seat for something to happen and then completely miss it when it happens.  While we do get to see the “show” before the film ends it had much more of a Moulin Rouge costume approach with beautifully simple garments throughout in anticipation of the bejeweled and feathered costumes within the performance; which i think i like the build up better.  I’m not a dancer, but all of the layers and warm up pieces on Natalie Portman were gorgeous!  The Costumer Design, Amy Westcott, wonderfully balanced the white and black swans through out the film in all of the characters giving us windows into the souls of where each person was at in their transformation throughout the film.

The films website www.ijustwanttobeperfect.com is super fun with clips and portions of the soundtrack if you need more encouragement to checkout the film.  Also here are a couple of movie posters, i so wish we got more of these in the states…beautiful imagery and i totally would have been in line opening night!