I watched Black Swan, in English. This is another ‘just in case’ thing. F has mentioned that he wants to see it – and that would be in Italian.

To be quite honest, I had read some reviews that didn’t exactly praise the film. And, anyway, ballet is not really my thing, even if I did treat V to the ballet at La Scala some years ago and, surprisingly, quite enjoyed it. I guess ‘live’ is different, as it usually is.

So, although I didn’t particularly want to see it, I thought it better to watch it in English first.

First I had to get it from work to home which proved a little more difficult than I thought it would. Then, at home, I couldn’t get it onto the Mac but had to put it onto the laptop. The resulting CD had no sound on the Mac. Nor on the laptop! So, a couple of night ago, I sat and played the original file through the laptop.

This is not ideal. The picture quality is good but not as good as on my Mac. The sound quality is not really good at all. Very tinny, as one might expect. And, of course, I was also doing other things on my Mac so found I had to rewind a bit a couple of times.

It was an ‘interesting’ film. However, to me, it seemed as if it didn’t quite know what it wanted to be. Was it a would-be horror movie, a psychological thriller or a movie about relationships? It was, in some ways all three – but in trying to cover all three things it failed to cover any of them well.

The relationship and development of the mother’s character could have been much better; the complexity of the relationships could have been clearer; the development of the other dance characters would have been useful, if only for comparison with the ‘star’, to see that she was different.

I don’t want to give anything away in case you intend to see it.

For me, I would say I was right not to want to go and see it as it left me with a feeling that things had been missed. Of course, that could have been because, whilst trying to see the film AND work on my Mac, I actually missed things

Still, as I say, it was interesting. I will watch it again but I won’t be too bothered if F doesn’t want to go and see it in the end.