Director Darren Aronofsky on the set of BLACK SWAN. (Handout)

LOS ANGELES -- When an acclaimed art-house director says he wants to make a film about your workplace, you'd think the answer would be yes -- especially in as arty a world as ballet.

Not so when Darren Aronofsky (Requiem For A Dream, The Wrestler) got underway on Black Swan, his already-Oscar-buzzy portrayal of a young ballerina (Natalie Portman) whose personality begins to unravel with her career-making opportunity to play both Odette and Odile, the White and Black Swan in Swan Lake.

"Getting into the ballet world proved to be extremely challenging," Aronofsky says. "Usually when you say to someone, 'I want to make a movie about your world,' all the doors open and you can say anything you want.

"But the ballet world really wasn't at all interested in us hanging out. It took a long time to get the info and put it together," he says of the project, which has been brewing for a decade. (Aronofsky first approached Portman about the role in 2002.) "Over the years, Natalie would say, 'I'm getting too old to play a dancer, you'd better hurry up."

The American Ballet Theatre and New York City Ballet turned him down flat.

Eventually, the Philadelphia-based Pennsylvania Ballet agreed to make available its location and dancers.

Why the resistance? It's an insular world, but also a very public-relations conscious one. And Aronofsky's dark impulses, complete with dancers who cut themselves, and his willingness to equate the themes in Black Swan (in theatres Friday) with those of last year's The Wrestler probably didn't sit well with the higher-minded types in the ballet world.

"The connections between the two films didn't escape us," Aronofsky said when Black Swan debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival, "ballet being the highest art and wrestling being the lowest. That's if you consider wrestling an art, which most people don't, but I do."

Indeed, amid all the critical raves, there are a few voices in that community raising concern over its portrayal.

Aronofsky says he's seen those reports, and calls them "unfortunate. We've had very different reactions from dancers elsewhere. And I think so many dancers are incredibly relieved that there's finally a ballet movie that takes ballet as serious art and not as a place to have a love affair. If you actually look at ballet, the ballets themselves are incredibly dark and gothic -- Sleeping Beauty, Romeo & Juliet and, of course, Swan Lake.

"We took the fairy tale of Swan Lake and the ballet and basically turned all the characters -- Rothbart, the Prince, the Queen -- and translated them into characters in our movie reality. So it's really just a retelling of Swan Lake, but it definitely shows the challenges and darkness and the reality of what it takes to be a ballet dancer.

But it also shows the beauty of the art and the transcendence that's possible with that art."

Co-writer Andres Heinz says Black Swan began with a screening of Roman Polanski's Repulsion.

"I was fascinated by the psychological breakdown and I couldn't get the story out of my head. And a few weeks later, I was reading The Double by Dostoevsky, and it quickly melded in my head into what became (a project titled) The Understudy. I set it in the off-Broadway role of an actress who is suddenly thrust into the lead role, and the pressure creates a kind of fracture in her psyche and she has a psychological breakdown where she believes her understudy is undermining her.

"Then Darren came onboard and had the idea about Swan Lake, which was a brilliant addition."

Mila Kunis (That '70s Show, Family Guy) is that understudy, in a remarkably charged performance. Says co-writer Mark Heyman,

"I think Mila's character is kind of like a spirit guide in terms of taking someone down that rabbit hole to unearthing her darker self."

One thing Swan Lake inarguably has in common with The Wrestler is the initial realism of the filming (which gets tossed out in the hallucinatory last act).

"The whole cinema handheld approach to The Wrestler was a big risk to bring to a ballet film. I didn't know if it would work, but it's kind of cool, because it makes people think they're watching a certain kind of movie that can't ever freak out the way it does. It feels like a documentary at the beginning before it freaks out."

And of course, there was the dancing realism. Both Portman and Kunis had intense ballet lessons. For Portman, it was a refresher course, since she'd had ballet lessons until age 12.

"I started with my ballet teacher, Mary Helen Bowers, way ahead of time," Portman says. "Two hours a day, then five hours a day, adding swimming a mile a day, toning. The physical discipline really helped with the emotional side of the character, because you get a sense of the monastic side. You don't drink, you don't go out with your friends, you don't get much food, you're constantly putting your body through pain. You get an understanding of the self-flagellation of a ballet dancer."

But if he wanted physical verisimilitude, Aronofsky says he wasn't much interested in having his actresses show up with "method" madness.

"I've dealt with a few method actors, but I think it's a bunch of nonsense. It's film acting, and you have to be on when the camera's rolling. Sure, when it's an intense scene, you might want to keep that energy up between takes. But when it's 'cut' it's 'cut.' Even when it's 'action,' there's people with lights moving around. It's impossible to make believe that doesn't exist.

"I mean, not to scare away method actors -- actually I want to scare away method actors, because, y'know, it's a pain. 'Oh, you're really brooding! Go to your trailer and I'll see you in an hour.' "

Portman degree comes in handy

So, do ballet dancers tend to be a little, ahem, unbalanced?

Not to generalize, but Natalie Portman, does have a degree in psychology from Harvard, and she thinks there may be more than a little pathological smoke there.

"This was actually a case where something I learned in school proved valuable," she says with a laugh.

"Obsessive compulsive behaviour, the scratching, the bulimia, obviously ballet really lends itself to that because there's such a sense of ritual. The wrapping of shoes for performance, such a process, it's almost religious in nature, like Jews putting on their Tefillin (black prayer boxes worn on the head) or Catholics with their Rosary.

Obsession

"So a sort of religious obsession compulsion would be my professional diagnosis," she adds wryly.

The movie's choreographer, Benjamin Millepied says he's seen the obsession first-hand. "(Portman's) character of Nina, I've seen several girls that live with their parents and breathe ballet -- we call them 'Bunheads.' "

Writer Mark Heyman had another pathology in mind when he wrote Nina.

"I gave her was borderline personality disorder. I researched it and it does seem to encompass all symptoms. Of course, it's a multi-varied sickness, there are different versions. But a big inspiration was (a ballet dancer) I knew. She had danced in this big company, and when she had her first big role she had this recurring nightmare that the night of the opening she was going to die after she danced the role. She was convinced.

"So the night of the performance came, she just kind of collapsed shaking backstage. She's very happy now, she runs a chocolate company and had a baby."

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