Black Swan (**1/2)

Obsession, jealousy and repressed desire are the themes in this Darren Aronofsky-directed drama. All of Aronofsky’s lead characters seem to be obsessed with something. Here, the pressure of mastering the lead role in Swan Lake threatens to undo ballet dancer Nina (Natalie Portman). Her director (Vincent Cassel) tells her she has the technique necessary to play the White Swan, but seems to lack the passion to play her alter ego, the Black Swan. Nervous about her chances of landing the role, she sees a woman on the subway who looks exactly like her, her own alter ego. And then there is the company’s new dancer Lily (Mila Kunis), who may be a friend, may be competition, or may be the Black Swan of Nina’s imagination.

This is all very stylish, so that it seems both that Nina’s mind is playing tricks on her and that Aronofsky is playing with his audience. The direction is skillful, the shots crisp, with an effective use of close-ups. Cliff Mansell’s piano-driven score is also very dramatic. Aronofsky’s camerawork doesn’t call attention to itself as often as in early efforts like Pi and Requiem for a Dream, his first two features. Nor, with The Wrestler and this film, are his stories as pretentious as in Pi, or the ambitious mess that was The Fountain. Possibly this is because he no longer is co-writing his own films (or at least isn’t credited). Hence he plays to his strengths as a visual stylist here. It’s certainly a lot artier than The Wrestler, but the story is even simpler.

It’s a showcase role for Portman, who’s in every scene and herself must embody both swans, the repressed “mama’s girl” at the start of the film and the one who awakens to her own desires as the story moves to a climax (pun intended). Barbara Hershey plays Nina’s overbearing mother, and Winona Ryder makes a nice mini-comeback as a retiring dancer who feels pushed aside. Cassel, so excellent as the title character in the Mesrine gangster films, is well cast as the director who presses and manipulates Nina into letting herself go. The reason my rating is not higher is simply because, like Nina, Aronofsky has a lot of technique, but his movie feels full of artifice. It’s more psychological horror film than psychological drama. Black Swan is, metaphorically though not literally, bloodless.

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viewed 12/8/10 at Ritz East [PFS screening] and reviewed 12/8–9/10

Mao’s Last Dancer (***)

So many American films view foreign culture through an American lens, but this one (actually Australian) is about America viewed through the lens of a young Chinese man. Li Cunxin (Chi Cao) was doubly sheltered, having not only been raised in rural China during the Cultural Revolution, but also having spent his teen years in the cloistered environment of an elite ballet school. The movie begins with his arrival in Texas in 1979 for a summer stint with the Houston Ballet, an exchange arranged by Ben Stevenson (Bruce Greenwood), the Ballet’s artistic director. Director Bruce Beresford (Driving Miss Daisy) follows a conventional flashback structure in showing Li’s early life, and these scenes are compelling. However, they’re brief and only extend back to the day Li is plucked from his classroom to audition for a chance to train as a ballet dancer. Li’s excellent memoir, on which the film is based, includes multiple chapters about his life in a small village as a boy.

Understandably for a film made for an English-speaking audience, Beresford and screenwriter Jan Sardi focus on Li’s time in America. They certainly capture the ideological and cultural gulf between Maoist China and 1980s Texas, but de-emphasize the abject poverty that was the salient feature of everyday life in rural China. It’s the kind of poverty that is alien to the vast majority of Americans, and the passages in the memoir describing the enormity of that hunger and privation are not merely sad but also among the most fascinating.

In what it does portray, the movie commendably sticks very close to the facts, including in portraying the international incident that occurred when Li decided not to return to China. However, what is moving on the page can be mildly clichéed when telescoped into a two-hour film. On the other hand, getting to see the ballet sequences, so beautifully performed and filmed, is something the memoir couldn’t provide. Cao was clearly chosen for his dancing skills, not his acting, but Greenwood is quite good as the English-born Stevenson. These things and the novelty of Li’s story make the drama enjoyable to watch. Indeed, it has much of the appeal of Shine, another inspirational biopic with a screenplay by Sardi.

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viewed 8/12/10 at International House and reviewed 8/13 and 8/28/10

Step Up (**1/4)

? A rebellious white kid (Channing Tatum) at a black high school in Baltimore is forced into doing community service at a performing arts school. There, he shows off his hip-hop moves to an aspiring professional dancer played by Jenna Dewan, who also appeared in Take the Lead, another recent dance movie. R&B star Mario plays Tatum’s best friend.

+ Um, ex-model Tatum sure is handsome. There’s some decent soft hip hop on the soundtrack. The most interesting song, a blend of rap and orchestration that serves as the big showcase number, seems to be missing from the soundtrack album, though.

- Read the description and you know the story. Save the Last Dance is a more convincing movie covering the same ground. For a dance movie, the performances are too infrequent, and the romance generates little heat. The female characters, including Dewan’s, are all pretty trite. A couple of supporting characters have sudden transformations that aren’t that believable.

= **1/4 Although Step Up won’t win any awards, it might be worth seeking out if you enjoy the genre, as it at least doesn’t insult your intelligence.

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