MovieReviews BLACKSWAN TINYFURNITURE
Plenty of space for ideas and charm
BY ANN HORNADAY Art fans of a certain age will know the name
Laurie Simmons, whose arresting, color-satu- rated close-ups of dollhouse-size domestic spaces were part of the 1980s New York photography scene that included Cindy Sher- man and Richard Prince. Now Simmons’s daughter, Lena Dunham, has made a funny, affecting movie about growing up in the shadow of a formidable mom with “Tiny Furniture.” Like the diminutive scale its title implies, this is a film of modest scope but deceptively big ideas.What’smore, it announc- es a promising talent in Dunham, a filmmaker possessed of a refreshingly skeptical voice and a frank, disarming vision. If “Tiny Furniture” takes its inspiration from
real life, Dunham adds a layer of fiction, casting herself, her mother and her sister not as themselves but as characters. Aura (Dun- ham) has just graduated fromcollegewhen she returns to the loft she once shared with her mother, Siri (Simmons), and the teenage Nadine (GraceDunham).Greeted by a noncha- lant “Oh, hi” and little else, Auramust confront the fact that her presence is no longer cherished in a household where Siri’s career and Nadine’s precociousness take center stage. When those two decamp for a college tour, Aura seizes on the chance to act out progres- sivelymore petulant boundary violations. So she lets a freeloading hipster (Alex
NIKO TAVERNISE Natalie Portman plays a tormented ballerina in “Black Swan.”
A destructive dance of horror and beauty
BY ANN HORNADAY
Two years after “The Wrestler,” Darren Aronofsky presents a bookend of sorts with “Black Swan,” his inspired, unsettling drama about a ballerina teetering on the brink of greatness and madness. Just as Aronofsky dis- covered unexpected tenderness and vulnerabil- ity in the lockerroomsof professional wrestling, he brings out the toughness — and in this case outright terror—of a world that, while present- ingagentler face, ispoweredjust as compulsive- ly by painful physical and psychological ex- tremes. As Nina Sayers, Natalie Portman delivers a
bravura performance as a child-woman whose fragility gradually gives way to grave, even
grotesque self-destruction. Ballet fans, be fore- warned: “Black Swan” isn’t a classic dance film so much as a horror movie in which horror engages in a taut, occasionally excruciating pas de deux with lyricism. If you’re willing to travel down this alternate-
ly seductive and sadistic road, Aronofsky proves an assured, if occasionally perverse, guide. Nina is a featured dancer with a New York dance company when the troupe’s demanding artistic director, Thomas Leroy (Vincent Cassel), taps her to star in an upcoming production of “Swan Lake.” Her technical brilliance and tentative innocencemake her perfect for the White Swan, but he’s less sure she can pull off the ruthless- ness and sensuality of her evil twin, the Black
black swan continued on 42
Karpovsky) sleep in her mom’s bed and drink all the red wine in her pristine white cabinets (the source of one of the film’s funniest leitmotifs). She flirts with a ne’er-do-well chef (David Call) at the restaurantwhere sheworks. And she lets her rediscovered childhood friend Charlotte (the fabulous JemimaKirke) lure her into all the delicious snares downtown Man- hattan has to offer. Shot with just a consumer-grade Canon
digital camera, “Tiny Furniture” has the inti- mate look and feel of such recent “mum- blecore”movies as “FunnyHa-Ha” and “Hump-
tiny continued on 42 WASTELAND
Finding beauty in Rio’s largest landfill. 42
PLUS Family Filmgoer 47 DVDs43
OPENING NEXTWEEK
The latest installment of C.S. Lewis’s series, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, has Lucy and Edmund in Narnia by way of a magical painting. . . . I Love You Phillip Morris is a black comedy starring Jim Carrey as a Texas police officer-turned-con man who falls in love with his sensitive cellmate. . . . The Tourist stars Johnny Depp as a traveler who crosses paths with amysterious woman (Angelina Jolie) and becomes embroiled in an international tale of intrigue. . . . Leaving stars Kristin Scott Thomas as a bourgeois wife who falls for an immigrant ex-con. . . . Marwencol tells the story of Mark Hogancamp, who in order to recover from a potentially fatal brain injury rehabilitates himself by creating a fantasy world set in WorldWar II Europe. . . . All Good Things stars Kristen Dunst as a wealthy New York wife who is murdered.
rrrr Masterpiece rrr Very good rr Okay r Poor
RATINGSGUIDE No stars Waste of time
41 EZ
JOE ANDERSON/IFC FILMS
Director Lena Dunham stars with her real-life mother, Laurie Simmons, in “Tiny Furniture.”
n View movie trailers n Read reviews of all movies in area theaters n Buy tickets
K
the washington post friday, december 3, 2010 l
ALSOREVIEWED
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124 |
Page 125 |
Page 126 |
Page 127 |
Page 128 |
Page 129 |
Page 130 |
Page 131 |
Page 132