oiran | black swan / table hog

I was quasi-despondent when this didn't open in Nashville with the initial release on the 3rd because I love dance movies, and because I'm dramatic like that. The only Aronofsky movie I'd seen prior to this was Requiem for a Dream, which is awesome, albeit gut-wrenching, melodramatic, and gross, and has an amazing Clint Mansell soundtrack, so my Requiem experience + reading Black Swan reviews had my hopes very, very high.

I liked it very much. It was not all I'd hoped for, by any means (i.e. I did not leave feeling punched in the gut yet yearning to dance on tortured, malformed feet), but it was beautiful to look at, well-acted, and definitely held my interest. Natalie Portman's little-girl voice is put to good use as neurotic trina Nina Sayers (she squeaks out a desperate "Mommy!" more than once), and her dancing is not embarrassing (though her hands are pretty bad, IMO). This is not a dance story, though, so much as a story about a mentally unstable and emotionally stunted person who happens to be a dancer. I found that I would have liked further development of the disturbing mother-daughter relationship, and the movie seemed a little short to me, with the performance sequences coming off as pretty much incidental to the crazy. Which may have been the point, actually. The rest of the cast does admirably, as well, especially a scary Barbara Hershey as the mom who loves too much, and Mila Kunis as the relatively normal-seeming "bad" ballerina whose relaxed approach intimidates the high-strung Nina.

I am currently sitting at my favorite table at the coffeeshop near my house, and even though my battery is dying and I'm maximally caffeinated, I am loath to leave because I almost never get to sit at this table and I don't want to give it up. In fact, most days I can't get any table at all, and end up back at home sulking, which is just about as conducive to writing as one might expect.