** MAJOR SPOILERS **They got the title of this all wrong. It should be called All About the Three Faces of Eve. Or better yet, Next Stop, Crazy Town! Either way, it’s Aronofsky does DePalma or maybe DePalma does the Grimm brothers. It’s a wickedly twisted psychological meditation on the craziness of artists set in the swan-eat-swan © world of a ballet company and it's... KOO-KOO!
Natalie Portman is terrific as a troubled, sexually repressed girl, her growth stunted by her overbearing stage mother (a remarkable turn from Barbara Hershey). Portman’s anxieties manifest in conventional ways, but Aronofsky and company slyly depict her decent into koo-koo-ville as originally as possible, as though mania has never been portrayed on film before, ever. For those of us who have seen a movie every day of our lives that notion is absurd, but to Portman’s character, walled-in, repressed and full of doubt, her express train to the booby-hatch is all new to her. And it’s twisted, tragic fun to watch her as she pirouettes into la-la land, where her rival (Mila Kunis, deliriously dark) may or may not be out to get her or sleeping with her, and… hey what’s that sore on her back??
While it’s true the plot has some Hitchcockian conventionalism, the filmmaking is supremely imaginative and passionate. The dancing camera, the ominous music, and the inspired special effects make this a feast of the senses. It’s so worth seeing. It’s a pure kick!
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