Natalie Portman stretches out in ‘Swan,’ could reach an Oscar

Or enjoyed her as a waifish pathological liar who enchants a depressed Zach Braff in 2004′s Garden State . But you have never seen her dominate a movie so authoritatively as this. You won’t be having a lot of fun at “Black Swan,” but the less seriously you take this wildly melodramatic, unashamedly pulpy look at the blood sport that is New York City ballet, the better your chances are of enjoying yourself even a little. Black Swan pirouettes along a series of fine lines, between control and abandon, creativity and madness, objective and subjective experience. Like its predecessors, “Black Swan” begins as a backstage drama but winds up being a meditation on female ambition, which in this case gets punished with singularly perverse excess. This tale of feathered ambition starring Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis as dueling ballerinas is not just any kind of trash, it’s high-art trash, a kind of “When Tutu Goes Psycho” that so prizes hysteria over sanity that it’s worth your life to tell when its characters are hallucinating and when they’re not. Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman) has obsessively perfected her flawless technique at an unnamed New York company for years when she’s finally considered for the lead in an upcoming production of “Swan Lake.” As her manipulative artistic director, Thomas Leroy (Vincent Cassel), observes, Nina possesses all the innocence and self-control of the Swan Queen, but his “stripped-down, visceral” version of the ballet demands that she also portray the Black Queen. “Black Swan” is an amazing film that is bound to snare Natalie Portman her second Oscar nomination for a performance that is clearly one of the year’s best.

The director here is the earnest Darren Aronofsky , and his trademark sledgehammer style makes any kind of enjoyment difficult. At: Boston Common, Kendall Square. It’s difficult to disagree: With her breathy whisper of a voice, cosseted home life with overprotective mother Erica (Barbara Hershey) and wide-eyed sexual naivete, Nina remains a child-woman swaddled in feathery scarves and downy pink shrugs. As he showed in “The Wrestler” and earlier, this is someone who believes in bludgeoning audiences into submission. Recalling the reaction to that clip, she says: “It makes it almost worth it to have this sort of persona of being put-together and conservative. When you experience ballet the Aronofsky way, you count yourself lucky that the dancers don’t have easy access to staple guns. When I spoke to Natalie Portman in Hollywood, she told me ballet’s mental demands are equal to the physical ones. Rated: R (some strong sexual content, disturbing violent images, language, some drug use, and dancing monsters) She smiles often and is exceedingly polite, but there is never a doubt of who is in charge of the interview — and it isn’t the person asking the questions. “I have so many leotards, tights and shoes. So much ballet stuff I’ll never use again.” She wonders aloud about a charity auction, then reconsiders: “Not that they would want my smelly shoes.” Just call it the sweet smell of success.