Actress Portman takes a dark turn in Venice film

Venice: The Venice film festival opens on Wednesday with "Black Swan", a dark psychological drama starring Natalie Portman as a ballerina who finally lands the lead role but loses her grip on reality as the pressure builds.

The arrival of a rival dancer, played by Mila Kunis, triggers obsessive jealousy and sexual liberation in a plot which echoes that of the ballet around which it revolves.

A steamy love scene between the actresses, and elements of violence and horror, make the role a departure from clean-cut on-screen roles previously associated with Portman.

"(Director) Darren (Aronofsky) talked to me about this (sex) scene in our first meeting eight years ago," Portman told reporters in Venice following a press screening, ahead of the formal evening red carpet world premiere.

"He described it as: 'You're going to have a sex scene with yourself' and I thought that was very interesting because 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 won the top prize in Venice - the Golden Lion for best picture - two years ago with "The Wrestler", and he said he saw similarities between the two.

"When I started to think about doing Black Swan after The Wrestler, I very much saw them as related to each other," the 41-year-old said.

"The more I looked into the world of ballet, I actually started to see all these similarities to the world of wrestling -- they both have these performers that use their bodies in extremely intense physical ways."
French actor Vincent Cassel, who plays the ballet director, wondered why anyone would want to go into the world of dance.

"I think if you want to be a dancer it has to be a vocation,” Cassel said.

“It's like being a priest, really, because you work so hard, you work every day, it hurts like crazy and you make no money. So I guess it's just not something one should do."

Black Swan kicks off the annual Venice film festival on the Lido waterfront where stars, fans and reporters rub shoulders for the next 11 days.

Festival director Marco Mueller said he had made youth the priority in his choice of directors for the 23 competition films this year, and he also hoped that the presence of Hollywood mavericks would make up for the expected shortage of A-list celebrities this year.

The average age of filmmakers in the main line-up this year was an unusually low 47 years, and included Oscar winner Sofia Coppola, 39, with her comic drama "Somewhere".

At the other end of the age range were 78-year-old Monte Hellman competing with low-budget crime drama "Road to Nowhere"; and Polish filmmaker Jerzy Skolimowski, 72, on the Lido with the thriller "Essential Killing".

In Essential Killing, actor and painter Vincent Gallo stars as an Afghan Taliban fighter who is captured but escapes on his way to a secret detention centre in Europe.

The subject matter, and Gallo's reputation as an uncompromising, eccentric artist, make it one of the more eagerly anticipated movies in competition.

Actor Casey Affleck presents documentary "I'm Still Here", about his brother-in-law actor Joaquin Phoenix's decision to retire in 2008 and reinvent himself as a hip-hop musician.

And Julian Schnabel directs "Slumdog Millionaire" star Freida Pinto in "Miral", a film about an orphaned Palestinian girl growing up in the wake of the first Arab-Israeli war, who finds herself drawn into the conflict.