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Darren Aronofsky’s thriller, Black Swan](Black Swan (2010) - Movie | Moviefone), is set to make its debut tonight at the Venice Film Festival. Critics at the Fest have already had a chance to view the story of a psychologically fragile ballerina and the early reviews are in. Read on for some of the highlights and dissenting opinions.
Kirk Honeycutt at THRwasn’t entirely impressed with Aronofsky’s latest vision: “Trying to coax a horror-thriller out of the world of ballet doesn’t begin to work for Darren Aronofsky.” Honeycutt doesn’t dislike the film – in fact, he thinks it’s so bad it’s good: “An instant guilty pleasure, a gorgeously shot, visually complex film whose badness is what’s so good about it. You might howl at the sheer audacity of mixing mental illness with the body-fatiguing, mind-numbing rigors of ballet, but its lurid imagery and a hellcat competition between two rival dancers is pretty irresistible. Certain to divide audiences, “Swan” won’t lack for controversy.” He does like the performances of the leading ladies, saying Portman does well in the dance numbers and “in her acting, too, you sense she has bravely ventured out of her comfort zone to play a character slowly losing sight of herself. It’s a bravura performance.” Meanwhile, “Kunis makes a perfect alternate to Portman, equally as lithe and dark but a smirk of self-assurance in place of Portman’s wide-eyed fearfulness.” The critic feels the black/white dynamic almost works, but the “horror-movie nonsense drags everything down the rabbit hole of preposterousness.”
- Hit the jump to see what Variety and several other venues had to say about the film.*Filed under: Horror, Thrillers, New Releases, Noir, Newsstand, Review Roundup
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