Okay, in Black Swan, she's the Swan Queue. The movie follows her audition for the role and obtaining it, and her attempt to excel at playing the black swan and win the love of her director, a charismatic and slightly eccentric Thomas Leroy played by Vincent Cassel, without the act of the love.
The movie may seem shallow to those deeply entrenched in the ballet theatre, but for me, it is the first time I heard about the Swan Lake story. There exist not only the white swan, a prince, but also a black swan and a monster. The black swan seduces the prince and white swan commits suicide. Oh, right, white swan is a princess, and her committing suicide relieves her of a curse that makes her the swan and she is, therefore, free.
Nina, the white swan struggles with controlling and a single parent and her mental condition that has her fantasizing and hallucinating (for the most part without the help of drugs) many things that we, the movie viewer, believe to be true--because they are completely within the norm of what could happen to a child of a constricting single mother and high competitive show business of New York ballet theater.
One wonders, what could have been a better outcome ? She has won and achieved what her mother had given up to have her for--to become the star in a ballet production. It would seem that after all the torment she suffers to achieve this, the hard work, the physical pain, and all that mental illness, and to have survived and displayed to the audience her brilliant performance, that any thing else would just ruin perfection.
In an ideal world, I would like to find a better outcome. But those tears in the white swan's eyes as she closes them for the last time. I could not bear the thought of bringing her back to this world, to her mother, to her director, and to her friends all of whom may love her, but are actually really her antagonizers.
At least, at this moment, I don't want to imagine the after, the ER scene, and 3 months later... It all seem so meaningless.
Oh, as an aside, loved Winona Ryder as Beth, very very memorable character, just as her Amanda (spock's mother)...
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