Film review: Black Swan (12A)

Pack your sandwiches, a Thermos of baffle juice and a copy of the Diagnostic And Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders because Natalie Portman, courtesy of dotty director Darren Aronofsky, is taking you on a journey to the outer edges of cr-a-a-zy.

Black Swan is as hysterical as a teenage girl dumped at a disco. The grainy images, concrete breeze blocks and the gnarled feet may suggest a lo-fi visceral docu-drama but the sensual hyper-reality of Nina Sayers' descent into hallucinogenic schizophrenia turns the volume right up to 11.

Aronofsky, in his companion piece to The Wrestler, keeps it together for most of the movie - the neat double-takes, tricksy visuals and raw sympathy put us right there in the scarred shoes of the flapping wannabe. But, by the histrionic final reel, we've tripped into woozy WTF territory.

The story is this: Porcelain perfectionist Nina Sayers is desperate to dance the Swan Queen in the director's stripped-down, sexed-up production.

Vincent Cassel's flouncy Leroy says Nina is perfect for the White Swan, all buttoned-up cardigans and Sandra Dee, but she needs to get in touch with her Black Swan - tight leggings and jivin' in the shake shack.

She should live life like her rival, the laid-back Lily (Mila Kunis), who has a wicked grin on her blister lips and black wings tattooed on her back (in case we miss the symbolism).

But time is not on Nina's side. Just look at Winona Ryder's embittered turkey twizzler Beth. The ex-princess is pensioned off in a whirl of pinot and pointlessness at the height of her powers.

So Nina begins her frantic descent into a fractured hell, taking in lesbian chic, a pill or two, a snog in an alley with a bad boy and some red lenses that make her look all mean and stuff.

Everything cracks - nails, knuckles, egos, psyches and mirrors - lots and lots of mirrors - in this overwrought exploration of delusion and dedication.

Ballet, supposedly a thing of transcendent beauty and sublime release, becomes a brutal regime of torture, restraint and devotion. This nun-like orthodoxy is caught in the frigid oppression of Nina's ex-dancer mum, (a creepy Barbara Hershey) who is omnipresent, over-interested and eerily intrusive.

The ageing never-was weeps impotently into her palette as she daubs Scream-like depictions of her darling daughter. (I know! Right?)

That is not to say the film is not brilliant - it is. Emaciated Natalie Portman, stalked by an over-the-shoulder cameraman, is compulsive viewing, the crumbling of her reality caught in a glance or the twitching of a neck muscle (exposed like a mooring line at low tide).

Her dancing, to these untutored eyes, is hard graft but impeccable and she is well served by an Oscar-nominated director who knows all about trapping the four dimensions of madness on the two dimensions of screen.

All I'm saying is, well, woah, there, old chap... dial it down. Edith Nesbit promised us ribbons and grace, not a potty opera of dysmorphic disorders.

– From January 2011