Venice Film Festival Opens with ‘Black Swan,’ Starring Natalie Portman

Director Darren Aronofsky’s dark psychological drama Black Swan, starring Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis, opened the 2010 Venice Film Festival Wednesday. In the film, Portman portrays a ballerina who earns her big break, but becomes sexually liberated and obsessively jealous when Kunis’ character, a rival dancer, arrives on the scene.

Portman’s role is a far cry from characters she has played in the past, and Black Swan contains a steamy love scene involving Portman and Kunis to go along with the elements of horror and violence that make it such an intriguing psychological drama, ABC News reports.

“Darren [Aronofsky] talked to me about this [sex] scene in our first meeting eight years ago,” Portman told reporters in Venice. “This movie is in so many ways an exploration of an artist’s ego and that narcissistic sort of attraction to yourself and also repulsion with yourself.”

Aronofsky, who won the Golden Lion at the 2008 Venice Film Festival for his critically acclaimed drama The Wrestler, views his most recent work and Black Swan as companion pieces, according to Just Jared.

“They are really connected and people will see the connections,” he said at the Venice Film Festival. “It’s funny because wrestling some consider the lowest art -- if they would even call it art -- and ballet some people consider the highest art. But what was amazing to me was how similar the performers in both of these worlds are.”