Black Swan
Er, right. So. Timid, obsessed-with-perfection wispy girl played by Natalie Portman. She is doe-eyed and sweet and repressed like a massively repressed thing. She has a mother who wanted to be a prima ballerina and never made it out of the working ranks. There is no Daddy, and even if he was still around, for the purposes of this film, he doesn't actually exist.
This is a story about a little girl young woman whose mother is obsessed with ballet and transmits her mental fucked-upness to her child, and forces(?) Timid to take up ballet to prove... she coulda been a contender?
The mother in this movie is truly a nasty piece of work, enormously manipulative and emotionally abusive and controlling. It's no fucking wonder her kid is screwed up, honestly. Timid has obvious major anxiety issues from the start of the film, and it only gets worse.
Of course, the ballet company is filled with viciously competitive girls who just don't get that Timid is a sweet girl and should be treated nicely, but because they're vicious and competitive, they don't. They're the typical mean, brittle, self-promoting girls you get in movies about high school interactions, and even though these women are all (presumably) beyond high school, nothing is any different.
Timid hears about the Big Role (or maybe she wants to be Prom Queen?), and is told she's never going to wear that gilt crown the black tutu because she's only suited for the AV club the white tutu, and will therefore wind up in the chorus. This is from the director, of course, who then dry-humps and traumatises Timid, who bites him and flees. He's impressed, because his current pet Desperation (Winona Ryder) doesn't whimper as prettily any more.
Mila Kunis turns up. She's less technically proficient, but she's the example of how Timid needs to move if she wants to wear the black tutu, damn it! (OMFG, does Mila Kunis ever look hot when dancing. She really does.) Also, she's friendly and seems like a decent human being. Clearly, this is someone to beware of and she should be viewed with suspicion and distrust. (Frankly, she's the only character in the whole movie I could stand, as she seemed to be the only real human being.)
Or to develop a(n apparently) frightening lesbian crush on, go out to a club with, take drugs with, and upon parting for the evening, hallucinate going home and receiving (mildly) wild oral sex from. Oh, and let's not forget the confrontation with Mommy, who can't believe her little twenty-something is out after 9pm on a pre-dance-practise night.
I'm sorry, I just can't keep going. Suffice it to say, Black Swan is mostly about a mentally ill young woman failing to get help from every quarter, and in fact being pushed from all sides to be something she may not even want to be, but she's too far gone inside her own head to recognise wanting something else is OK, or even possible. And then she takes the route of every relatively complex female character ever written by Hollywood, and dies in the end. Or so we're left to decide for ourselves, actually, but it goes with the idea that she's 'too fragile for this rough world', which seems to be Aronofsky's point.
Generally crap movie. Fairly cheesy. Mildly titillating. Portman and Kunis should be proud of the skills they picked up for the film, they did lovely work in those moments we got to see them dance, but overall, it's just lame enough it shouldn't make it into Oscar territory, but not so overtly stupid that it should attract the attention of the Razzies.