Danse macabre

Listen to: Along the Run - Art of Fighting

Went to watch Black Swan today. Seeing as Natalie Portman won the award recently, and all the hype about the movie before this, and the Oscar hype around it blah blah, I've been wanting to watch it for some time.

So, on to the movie. Do stop if you don't want spoilers, kthxbai.

*SPOILERS UNDER THIS SO BE WARNED AND DON'T WHINE IF YOU ACCIDENTALLY READ ANYTHING*

1. Natalie Portman's performance as a timid naive girl - not woman, not yet - was pretty convincing. I've seen her in several movies - Closer, The Other Boleyn Girl, Brothers, V for Vendetta - and it's probably this movie that made me aware of how loud her breathing can be. Hahahhaa. Yes well, I see the point (although there might not be any) - she's a breathless girl caught between what is expected of her, her idea of perfection, the pressure she puts on herself and by others - and she can't catch her breath just yet, and she's breathing like a small child. Or like someone gasping for air.

2. Gratuitous lesbian sex scene was gratuitous. You poor people in Malaysia probably won't see it. Unless you acquire - ahem - the movie.

3. Wait, seriously, that's Winona Ryder? And they had to name her Beth in here...either the scriptwriter was smiling to himself thinking, Oh yes, I am clever choosing a name from Little Women, especially the sweet innocent Beth - or I'm just thinking too much. But Girl, Interrupted she isn't in here...quite the contrary.

4. Was it you who fangirled over Vincent Cassel, Chin? Seductive Cassel is seductive...but he just came across as a creepy older guy for me.

5. The one line that stood out most for me was the one which Portman's character - Nina's - mother kept saying, "You're a sweet girl."

You used to tell me that I was a nice girl. You might have told me that I was a sweet girl, a few times. You called me a kid once or twice, that I remember. But I was always the nice girl.

Here, though, in the movie, there's something sinister in the way people keep telling Nina she's a nice girl - "frigid", to quote Cassel's Thomas. Her mother, who keeps insisting she's a "sweet girl", and cultivating the idea by putting her to bed every night, turning on the music box playing Swan Lake before Nina sleeps, the pink walls and stuffed toys, the cake with vanilla and strawberry filling with roses and a ballerina. Almost as though she's afraid of letting Nina grow up, by being over-protective and over caring.

And Thomas, who keeps telling Nina to "let go", to "seduce the audience" with her black swan, and then proceeds to break down her naivety and innocence systematically...and Nina develops a crush for him. Sees nothing wrong with what he's doing, although she behaves otherwise when she witnesses what he did to his previous favourite ballerina.

Lily, who tells Nina to "live life", takes her out for a night of partying and drinking - she, too, becomes another factor to the loss of Nina's innocence. They were both able to bring out the black swan in Nina, who had not dared to do these things previously.

In a way, Nina grows up, but traumatically. The white swan is fragile and pure and sweet. The white swan dies in the end, she says. The black swan seduced the prince who would have given the white swan the love she needed to turn back into a girl. The white swan dies.

Nina was a girl who didn't want to grow up, it seemed. And like the white swan, there were others who would want to change her from what she was before. Thomas, in a way...he might have casted Nina in the role initially just so he could have the pleasure of smashing her innocence like breaking a mirror...mmm. But no, he found a replacement, didn't he? When the beguiling Lily entered the picture, he kept up the facade for Nina - in the end, though, she was his "my little princess", just as Beth had been to him before.

But like most people - there's always the side that you play on most days. And then the alternate, which you may put on when you need to.

Makeup on, makeup off. There's been a costume change but no one is any the wiser.