In the 2011 Academy Awards Darren Aronofsky's wondrous Black Swan lost out to Tom Hooper's heart-warming and beautifully crafted The King's Speech. Both films are excellent yet they are poles apart and perhaps impossible to compare. The Academy has always liked classic films, with their over 50 year old voting pool (on average), and so it is not surprising that the precocious Black Swan lost out to The King's Speech. Aronofsky's brave and shocking film is a few steps away from being the general crowd pleaser that is Hooper's film (Hooper also won "Best Director" that year) with its alarming portrayal of a young ballet dancer's disintegration under the pressure of the rigorous world of classical ballet with its emphasis on beauty and perfection.

Natalie Portman plays Nina – the vulnerable young dancer who's technique is perfect but who is woefully frigid – as criticised by Thomas her mentor and the artistic director of the ballet company. Thomas, played to lascivious perfection by Vincent Cassel, holds Nina's future in his hands – the ballet company will open its new season with Swan Lake in which its principal dancer must be able to dance two very distinct roles, the pure, innocent, and beguiling White Swan Odette, and the evil, seductive, mesmerising Black Swan – Odile. Thomas chooses Nina in the end but constantly taunts her as she repeatedly fails to embody the Black Swan to his liking.

As the opening day looms closer, the already slightly unstable Nina starts to unravel. She spends her days between the dance studio and the Manhattan apartment that she lives in with her overbearing and emotionally abusive mother who treats Nina like a 6 year old. Erica, Nina's mother, played by the powerfully talented Barbara Hershey, is a failed ballerina herself, and it is clear that her obsession with her daughter is also mixed with a certain jealousy that Nina is the far better dancer.

As Nina starts to see darker versions of herself in mirrors and in dark corridors she also starts to have other more disturbing hallucinations. Aronofsky's unnerring eye never tips us into the cheesiness of horror, yet horrific the hallucinations are in their indication of Nina's growing psychosis. Only Aronofsky, whose films are as diverse as Requiem for Dream, The Fountain, and The Wrestler could has taken a slightly sterile topic like the world of ballet and turned it into a rich, beautiful and terrific film.

As Nina sacrifices herself to the perfection of her art we are swept along by her passion and her madness. The ballet scenes, the intricate costumes, Portman's acting as she transitions from the beautiful but mousy Nina into the epitome of the Swan Queen are mesmerising.

Black Swan is a sublime film about the sublime. It is a beautiful incubus, a thriller with the heart of an art film that isn't afraid to push the boundaries of the viewers and of the artists who struggle to make such films. In the end, Portman won the "Best Actress" Oscar for her role, but in films like these it is truly the ensemble of cast and crew that deserve the award.

All DVDs reviewed in this column are available in the writer's favourite DVD store:
Music and Expression, Thamel, Phone # 014700092