Oct 13, 2010 10:00 PM

Trailer: Black Swan Puts Natalie Portman Through Painful Paces

Ouch! Natalie Portman looks graceful and tortured in the trailer for Black Swan, which casts the Oscar-nominated actress as an ambitious ballet dancer. The new film from Darren Aronofsky uses the famously painful demands of high-end dance training as a point of departure for a series of elegant tableaux infected by nasty shenanigans.

Set amid Manhattan’s high-culture elite, Black Swan, which screened at the Venice and Toronto film festivals, represents a radical departure from Aronofsky’s previous blue-collar workout in The Wrestler.

The trailer embedded above features Mila Kunis as a rival dancer who looks like she’s ready to rip Portman a new leotard, but the source of agony at 1 minute, 50 seconds in remains a mystery. Black Swan opens Dec. 1.

Follow us on Twitter: @hughhart and @theunderwire.

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From Los Angeles, Hugh Hart covers movies, television and assorted pop culture oddities for Wired.com. He also writes twisted pop songs. ... Read more

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