There isn’t a website online today that doesn’t have Natalie Portman’s picture prominently featured. Gawker is littered with Black Swan ads, People is obsessing about her pregnancy, and any major write-up of the latest Your Highness trailer has deemed it a Portman movie. No one else is in it. (Sorry, awards contender James Franco.) Yes, Oscar season is in full swing, meaning 80% of the world will start bitching she’s overrated and ragging on Black Swan sometime in the next week.
That would be stupid of them. Black Swan is phenomenal. It can’t be overexposed, though the publicity machine will certainly try.
Hopping onto that exposure bandwagon is IFC, who premiered the trailer for The Other Woman today. Formerly titled Love and Other Pursuits, it played the Toronto Film Festival tovery little buzz. It was Black Swan that came out flying, which suggests The Other Woman might not be all that good. It certainly has a pretty mawkish trailer, with the exception of Portman. I remember scoffing at her being cast in this — oh please, Portman as a stepmom? –, but it looks as though Darren Aronofsky tortured the little girl out of her. Portman (despite her dewy looks which she can’t help) is finally a believable adult onscreen. The little exchange between her and Scott Cohen at the beginning is the stuff of actual grown-ups. I wish this Portman could go back and re-record her scenes in Closer. They would be so much more intense and startling now, instead of just feeling vaguely awkward.
If only the rest of the film matches up. It looks awfully dreary, cliched, and trite beyond her performance, but perhaps there are hidden depths to it. Thanks to Yahoo! Movies for the embed: