Black Swan.

It's my own fault.

I had stupidly high expectations.

I love Natalie Portman. (Want to be her.)

I love ballet. In the abstract at any rate.

(I'm sure I'd have made it as a prima b if I'd started classes any sooner than 16 years into my life at reputable local dance studio - note the f - Hoofers. But I got to wear those soft pink tights with a seam up the back. That was more or less enough for me.)

So Black Swan. A combination of my two loves. How could it go wrong?

But wait. This winning combination was overlaid with giant great dollops of Darren Aronofsky.

I haven't ever really recovered from seeing what - certainly at the time - was the most harrowing film of my life to date. Requiem for a Dream.

Rewind to the year 2000. Young Me steps along the street to meet Ross at the pub opposite the Cameo for a cool refreshing drink before we - oh so cool it felt like we were on the very fringes of filmic culture - ventured in to the cinema to see this obscurely tipped masterpiece.

I remember almost nothing of the film. I watched a great deal of it through splayed fingers (my clever tactic for avoiding gore and horror). But there were drugs and drugs and drugs. And it was exceeding harrowing. Or I was very young. I'd be interested to see it again now with my old tired eyes. But we ventured out into the dark of the night once the credits had begun to roll, shaking slightly, and I remember thinking with some mild distress that the world was clearly a wickeder and more miserable place than I'd quite realised before.

Then The Wrestler was brilliant. So what's a girl to think?

What she now thinks is that Black Swan is The Wrestler (except Natalie's a rising rather than a fading star) about anorexics.

I loved the tutus and the feathers and the sequins and the make-up.

I loved less the slicing and the smashing and the wide wild eyes and the sinister slightly out of focus camera work and the shrieking sound design and the blood and the blood and the blood.

I see exactly what he was trying to do and I think he did it. (Oh how pompous she is!) With an abundance of lascivious gore along the way.

But it was a little bit too self-indulgent for my liking.

Having said that, Natalie was superb. My girl crush lives on.