GamerTab That was an excellent one.

Senteur As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

SanEat A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

BelSports This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

HumanoidOfFlesh Jennifer Connelly plays Claire Hamilton,a ballerina who comes to Budapest to pursue her ballet career.Claire goes to the audition and back at her hotel receives black flowers addressed to long dead ballerina Natalie Horvath.She is possessed by the ghost of a 19th century prima-ballerina who was killed in a tragic carriage accident."Etoile" shares some glaring similarities with Darren Aronofsky's recent hit "Black Swan" for example the theme of loss identity.Like "The Spider Labirynth" it was shot in Budapest.The action is slow and the film is highly contemplative and subtle.It's certainly fascinating to compare it with "Black Swan".So if you are a fan of romantic horror you can't go wrong with "Etoile".7 swans out of 10.

MARIO GAUCI This has been getting a belated reputation (I admit to being totally unfamiliar with it prior to a recommendation from a Maltese friend of mine last week!) as a sort of dry-run for one of last year's most acclaimed films, BLACK SWAN. In fact, it similarly deals with a young and beautiful ballerina whose life is inextricably altered when she applies for the starring role of the famous Tchaikovsky opus "Swan Lake" (though here everything eventually works its way to a happy ending).While it does not go into the psychological avenues taken by Darren Aronofsky's recent effort, the film nonetheless plays out like a Kafkaesque thriller – with the two protagonists (the hero is a likable fellow American who happens to stay on the same floor of her Budapest hotel) sucked in by a vortex of surreal events that literally transcends the passage of time! If anything, ETOILE also recalls Hitchcock's VERTIGO (1958) in equal measures, as ageing and crippled impresario/dancer(!) Laurent Terzieff moulds leading lady Jennifer Connelly (still in her Euro-fantasy phase that had kicked off with Dario Argento's typically elaborate PHENOMENA [1984] and also comprised Jim Henson's kiddie film LABYRINTH [1986]) into a prima ballerina from a past age who had perished tragically after a performance. Interestingly, 17 year-old Connelly – though she is meant to be spell-bound and, thus, also unable to recognize the young man – slips into the intricacies of her dual role much more easily than Natalie Portman in BLACK SWAN! A dilapidated country-house also plays a central part in the 're-enactment' – where the male lead (whose life had until then been controlled by art-collecting uncle Charles Durning, who is himself mysteriously hypnotized at one point, gets violent towards his relative and hit by a passing car!) eventually goes to meet the evil head-on just as the Tchaikovsky ballet is being played out on stage. He has to fight with a giant black swan which, when he kills, Terzieff falls dead in mid-performance elsewhere! In the end, while hardly a lost classic, this is a reasonably interesting (and stylish) effort, regardless of the BLACK SWAN connotations which will probably be attributed to it from here on in

ahovey I sent away to Japan for the this film. When I watched it, I was spellbound. To start with, in order to enjoy this film, I recommend that you watch a performance of Swan Lake beforehand. Jennifer Connelly's characters (Odette/Odile) will be told and danced with better understanding. She plays two different women: Claire Hamilton and Natalie Horvath. In my opinion, Claire is Odette, innocent and graceful and Natalie Horvath is Odile, seductive and sadistic.When Jason (Gary McCleery), Claire's new boyfriend, and Claire are together we hear beautiful soothing music. But when Jason and Natalie (Claire) are together we hear that perfect melancholy melody by Jurgen Kneiper.Claire's character suddenly changes when she takes on the persona of Natalie Horvath, mentally and physically. It is always a challenge for an actress to take the role of a ballerina. She does do a bit of the dancing herself and looks beautiful while doing it. As Natalie she holds her head higher, walks gracefully, sits up straight, is more calm, and also has no memory of who she really is.I won't give the entire plot away, but it's basically a story of suspense, mystery, ballet, love, supernatural powers, and a race against time itself. If you are a Jennifer Connelly or a Swan Lake fan, send for this. It is now on DVD.

nevthur A subtle, slow-paced Italian horror film --where the horror is mostly implied rather than overt-- about a ballerina who flies to Italy to try out for an exclusive ballet school and instead becomes lost in a surreal world where time stands still for a hundred year old ballet company, it's long closed theater, and it's diabolical director.WARNING: DESCRIPTIONS CONTAINS NUMEROUS SPOILERS:Jason (Gary McCleery), who is working for his cantankerous uncle Joshua (Charles Durning), sees the hauntingly beautiful Claire (Jennifer Connelly) as she climbs the stairs to her hotel room and drops a single ballet slipper behind her. In a Cinderella moment Jason hands her the slipper, introduces himself, and from that moment on he becomes obsessed with her to an almost unhealthy degree. Jason is so distracted by her, that he abandons his uncle in the middle of an important auction of antique clocks when he sees Claire sight-seeing in the auction hall (the clock theme is obviously a reference to the idea that time has stood still, or has become, at the very least, fluid here in this town, an idea further underscored by a scene where Jason wakes up late for work because the array of antique clocks in his hotel room all have the wrong time). In a scene which almost looks as if it was plucked (or "borrowed") from the film "Flashdance," Claire arrives for her ballet audition, looks at all the other girls nervously, peeks through the audition room door and sees how difficult its going to be, then becomes even more nervous when she hears the rejected ballerina's tearful account of how poorly she was treated. Claire freezes when they call her name and does not respond. She then gathers her things and leaves quickly. Unfortunately, in her panic and haste, she becomes lost in the theater and ends up standing in the gloom of the main stage where she puts on an impromptu performance (done by a double, not Connelly) which is witnessed by the tormented and haggard looking Marius Balkan (Laurent Terzieff). He says the name "Natalie" and Claire freezes. When he drops his cane she runs away. And so is set in motion a new and strange turn of events, where Claire becomes haunted by a past that is not her own (or is it?). When wandering the city with Jason she finds an old mansion that seems familiar. She knows exactly where the spare key is hidden and enters the house where she discovers numerous effigies of swans and paintings all of which reference "Swan Lake," the ballet which she has told Jason is her absolute favorite. The next time Jason sees her in the park by the mansion, she is sitting alone in an old fashioned dress, watching the swans swim on the pond. She no longer responds to the name Claire. And in a moment of unintentional humor, the otherwise brilliant composer Jurgen Knieper makes the most unfortunate choice to use a tremolo string motif that sounds exactly like the "Twighlight Zone" theme just as Claire reveals that her name is not Claire, but "Natalie."From this point on the story focuses on Jason's struggle to bring Claire back to reality, and his eventual discovery that she's not, as he first thinks, confused or insane, but rather there are powerful and dark supernatural forces in play. He discovers Natalie was a dancer who died long ago after she fled a performance of "Swan Lake" and the ballet's director, Marius, has been alive for at least a hundred years. Jason must now try to save Claire from the sinister ballet.There are many scenes in this film that could have been cut to make the movie flow better, and there are many edits within scenes which could have been made to make the flow tighter. And there is one bizarre and surreal moment during the climax of the film, which I will not reveal, which will either leave the viewer in riotous laughter from the unintentional humor of the situation, or will leave the viewer confused and ripped out of any sense of any kind of reality, or subtle sur-reality, that the film had maintained to that point.Overall the film is pretty much a failure. It's too slow, too vague, and too unfocused in its mission. Other Italian horror directors suffer this same problem (i.e. Argento and Bava) but those directors make up for the lack of focus and clear direction by drenching their films in artistic style. "Etoile" lacks this style, and so everything rests on the shoulders of the story, and the actors. Unfortunately the story is flawed and the actors are all sorely lacking in strong direction from the director. Gary McCleery as Jason is too over the top in his obsession with Claire and comes off a little bit stalker-ish at moments. Connelly is trying to play her character as dreamy and almost childlike, but with no apparent solid direction from Del Monte she ends up looking lost in her part. Horror fans, and fans of Italian horror will probably be more likely to at least partially enjoy the experience of viewing this film, but the casual film viewer will most likely be bored to tears. Fans of Jennifer Connelly might enjoy it purely because she looks so ethereally beautiful throughout the film (her features caught here in-between her earlier "lolita" looks and her later refined beauty). And good luck finding a copy. Thus far it has only been released in Japan on VHS.