Black Swan – Triple Play (Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy) Blu Ray – Barbara Hershey, Mila Kunis

Psychological thriller set in the American ballet world starring Natalie Portman in an award-winning performance. Nina (Portman) is a dancer in a New York City ballet company. Still living with her domineering and obsessive mother Erica (Barbara Hershey), a former ballerina herself, Nina barely has a life outside her dancing. When the company’s artistic director Thomas Leroy (Vincent Cassel) decides to replace prima ballerina Beth MacIntyre (Winona Ryder) for a major new production of Swan Lake, Nina finds herself losing sight of her own identity as she becomes caught up in a twisted competitive friendship with her rival Lily (Mila Kunis). Portman won the 2011 Golden Globe, BAFTA and Academy Award for Best Actress.

Please note this is a region B Blu-ray and will require a region B or region free Blu-ray player in order to play. Please note this is a region 2 DVD and will require a region 2 (Europe) or region Free DVD Player in order to play. Nina (Portman) is a ballerina in a New York City ballet company whose life like all those in her profession is completely consumed with dance. She lives with her obsessive former ballerina mother Erica (Hershey) who exerts a suffocating control over her. When artistic director Thomas Leroy (Cassel) decides to replace prima ballerina Beth MacIntyre (Ryder) for the opening production of their new season Swan Lake Nina is his first choice. But Nina has competition: a new dancer Lily (Kunis) who impresses Leroy as well. Swan Lake requires a dancer who can play both the White Swan with innocence and grace and the Black Swan who represents guile and sensuality. Nina fits the White Swan role perfectly but Lily is the personification of the Black Swan. As the two young dancers expand their rivalry into a twisted friendship Nina begins to get more in touch with her dark side – a recklessness that threatens to destroy her.

Feverish worlds such as espionage and warfare have nothing on the hothouse realm of ballet, as director Darren Aronofsky makes clear in Black Swan, his over-the-top delve into a particularly fraught production of Swan Lake. At the very moment hard-working ballerina Nina (Natalie Portman) lands the plum role of the White Swan, her company director (Vincent Cassel) informs her that she’ll also play the Black Swan–and while Nina’s precise, almost virginal technique will serve her well in the former role, the latter will require a looser, lustier attack. The strain of reaching within herself for these feelings, along with nattering comments from her mother (Barbara Hershey) and the perceived rivalry from a new dancer (Mila Kunis), are enough to make anybody crack… and tracing out the fault lines of Nina’s breakdown is right in Aronofsky’s wheelhouse. Those cracks are broad indeed, as Nina’s psychological instability is telegraphed with blunt-force emphasis in this neurotic roller-coaster ride. The characters are stick figures–literally, in the case of the dancers, but also as single-note stereotypes in the horror show: witchy bad mummy, sexually intimidating male boss, wacko diva (Winona Ryder, as the prima ballerina Nina is replacing). Yet the film does work up some crazed momentum (and undeniably earned its share of critical raves), and the final sequence is one juicy curtain-dropper. A good part of the reason for this is the superbly all-or-nothing performance by Natalie Portman, who packs an enormous amount of ferocity into her small body. Kudos, too, to Tchaikovsky’s incredibly durable music, which has meshed well with psychological horror at least since being excerpted for the memorably moody opening credits of the 1931 Dracula, another pirouette through the dark side. –Robert Horton