The Venice film festival opened runescape gold
on Wednesday with "Black Swan," a dark psychological drama starring
Natalie Portman as a ballerina who finally lands the lead role but loses
her grip on reality as the pressure builds.
The arrival of a rival
dancer, played by Mila Kunis, triggers both obsessive jealousy and
sexual liberation in a plot echoing that of the ballet around which it
revolves.
A steamy love scene between the actresses and elements of
violence and horror make it a departure from clean-cut on-screen roles
often associated with Portman.
"(Director) Darren (Aronofsky) talked
to me about this (sex) scene in our first meeting eight years ago,"
Portman told reporters in Venice after a press screening.
"He
described it as: 'You're going to have a sex scene with yourself,' and I
thought that was very interesting because this movie is in so many ways
an exploration of an artist's ego and that narcissistic sort of
attraction to yourself and also repulsion with yourself."
Portman,
her co-stars and the Venice jury led by director Quentin Tarantino
walked the red carpet at the official world premiere, signing autographs
and mingling with runescape accounts hundreds of fans.
"I just want to say 'amore cinema'," Tarantino told the opening ceremony.
Aronofsky
won the top prize in Venice -- the Golden Lion for best picture -- two
years ago with "The Wrestler," and he said he saw similarities between
it and Black Swan.
"The more I looked into the world of ballet, I
actually started to see all these similarities to the world of wrestling
-- they both have these performers that use their bodies in extremely
intense physical ways."
French actor Vincent Cassel, who plays the ballet director, wondered why anyone would want to go into the world of dance.
"I
think if you want to be a dancer it has to be a vocation. It's like
being a priest, really, because you work so hard, you work wow gold every day, it hurts like crazy and you make no money. So I guess it's just not something one should do."
YOUTH OVER CELEBRITY
Black
Swan kicks off the annual Venice film festival on the Lido waterfront
where stars, fans and reporters rub shoulders for the next 11 days.
Festival
director Marco Mueller has opted for youth in his choice of directors
of the 23 competition films, and he will also hope that the presence of
Hollywood mavericks can make up for the expected shortage of A-list
celebrities this year.
The average age of filmmakers in the main
line-up this year is an unusually low 47, and includes Oscar winner
Sofia Coppola, 39, with comic drama "Somewhere."
At the other end of the age range are 78-year-old Monte Hellman, competing buy wow gold
with low-budget crime drama "Road to Nowhere," and Polish filmmaker
Jerzy Skolimowski, 72, on the Lido with the Afghan-themed "Essential
Killing."
Actor Casey Affleck presents documentary "I'm Still Here,"
about his brother-in-law actor Joaquin Phoenix's decision to retire in
2008 and reinvent himself as a hip-hop musician.
And Julian Schnabel
directs "Miral," about an orphaned Palestinian girl growing up in the
wake of the first Arab-Israeli war, who finds herself drawn into the
conflict.
One filmmaker who will not be in Venice despite having a
film at the festival is Jafar Panahi, the Iranian jailed and later
released earlier this year. He said in a statement he had not been given
permission to travel cheap wow gold abroad by Tehran.