Featured Post

Prayers and thoughts: The Inseparables @Finboroughtheatre

Image
The Inseparables brings Simone de Beauvoir’s posthumously published novel to life. It traces a lifelong friendship between Sylve and Andrée, two unconventional girls who grew up in a stifling world where being a woman meant getting married or entering a convent. With a quick pace and engaging performances from the two leads, it is a journey back into the 20th century that captures two unconventional women trapped in a conventional world that will have you reflecting on how much or little things have moved on in the last century. It’s currently playing at the Finborough Theatre .  We’re introduced to Sylve praying for her country, France, to be saved from the war and indoctrinated into the world of faith and obedience. But too smart for all that, her life was full of detached guilt and boredom. But when she meets Andrée, a new arrival at her school, she is struck by how different she is from everyone else. She was burned in a fire and had a passion for life that nobody else she knew...

Movies: The Black Swan



Just before it opened this week I caught a preview of The Black Swan, the Natalie Portman movie which currently has posters all throughout the tube network. It is a gripping film about paranoia, fear, dedication and broken nails. Portman plays the role of Nina, who is coming to grips with the leading role in Swan Lake, while fearing her understudy played by the sexually provocative Mila Kunis.

You don't see much ballet so it is not a modern day The Red Shoes. It has more in common with films such as Polanski's The Tennant. The art is metaphor here and the central message surely has to be you can never try hard enough, as long as you stay away from broken mirrors and lesbian fantasies...

The debate about whether it remotely resembles anything of life in the ballet will continue. This is a movie so one suspects it is as far removed from reality as possible. Winnona Ryder is supposed to be a brilliant ballerina in her decline but spends her small amount of screen time looking unhappy and throwing around bitchy comments. It's hilarious if you take that she is talking about her own career. There is also Barbara Hershey who as Natalie Portman's mother looks creepy even before she says anything. It's all good fun in a slightly unnerving way so get the popcorn and go...

Popular posts from this blog

Opera and full frontal nudity: Rigoletto

Fantasies: Afterglow @Swkplay

Play ball: Damn Yankees @LandorTheatre