Next Stop Venice
Black Swan will get its first airing on September 1st, when it opens the Venice Film Festival at the Sala Grande cinema. It’s a fitting destination for Aronofsky’s latest work, after the director bagged the prestigious Golden Lion award when he brought The Wrestler to town back in 2008.
“The cast and crew of Black Swan are both excited and humbled by the selection committee’s invitation,” gushed the director. “It is an honour to walk the great red carpet on the Lido, and we are excited to premiere our film to the wonderful audiences in Venice.”
Well, he’s got to say all that really, hasn’t he? However, as only the fourth American director ever to win the Golden Lion (The others were John Cassavetes, Robert Altman and Ang Lee, so he’s in good company.), the festival is bound to hold a special place in his heart.
And as far as his cast are concerned, he fully deserves a second crack at the trophy.
“I keep on saying to Darren, ‘but you’re French, don’t you realise?”’ says Cassel, referring to Aronofsky’s style as a filmmaker.
“He wants to make those strange kind of movies, you know? They’re different, they’re independent, they’re not easy to sell most of the time, but they’re really special.”
Mila Kunis meanwhile, insists that the ballet training would have been a deal-breaker, had it not been for the man behind the camera.
“(I agreed to it) because I love Darren Aronofsky and, if anybody was ever going to get me to do it, it would be him,” she told Collider.
“If I was ever going to trust anybody to make me look like a ballerina, it would be him. I have two left feet!”
And not to be outdone, Sebastian Stan chucks his two-penneth in as well, describing himself as, “very fortunate and grateful to get to work with Darren Aronofsky.”
“From the time that I met him, Darren was just very direct and specific,” he said. “Even on set, he just knew what he wanted, at all times. That was a different process. He would come in and expect you to be able to improv.
He would give you a backstory of the character, and then he would just expect you to live in that world. He encouraged everyone to live in that world, the entire time that we were shooting, whether we were actually on camera or not.”
So will Aronofsky be leaving Venice with another trinket for the mantelpiece? From what we can glean from the trailer, it looks like he has every chance. It’s a rare trick to be able to create a genuinely creepy atmosphere from a two minute teaser, without giving the game away completely.
And the poster art alone is enough to give us the shivers…expect this to be the talk of the Festival, giving it some welcome buzz before it arrives on US screens on December 1st.
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