We can come to the most apparent conclusion, that being blue has always been the colour of melancholia, of sadness, and depression. I think this attributes to the name. After all, the set of circumstances within the film are – in some sense – a perfection of melancholia… even madness. They’re a culmination of various mental states gone awry.

Red has always been symbolic of blood, love, passion, fire, violence, and sexuality.

Mima no longer knows who she is. Perfect Blue deeply explores identity. Who is Mima?

We glimpse this psychosis through Mima’s visions of herself in the environment: in mirrors, in windows, and in the dark reflections of the train’s glass. We watch, helpless as Mima’s new life is sent astray by the ruminations of her previous life, with the visions of the person she used to be. 

It’s about people perceiving us in ways that we don’t really choose and that perception becoming reality. We see the fictional character taking over the person. In a world that feels very real what would happen if someone lost control of this character? Honestly, this idea would freak anyone out, especially now that people like to show a ‘different’ side of them online and on social media.

The direction of this film is made to distort the viewer’s understanding. Especially in the third quarter of the movie, everything is quite disorienting. As Mima starts to lose control of who she is, scenes start to merge together.

Will poor hard-working Nina (Natalie Portman) get the white-black double lead role of “Swan Lake,” pull off its taxing demands, survive till the first night and vanquish her rival, not to mention her terrors? Nina’s life spirals out of control for alarming reasons apparently beyond her control and indeed her comprehension.

In “Black Swan” Nina’s mirror-image starts to take on an independent life. Away from the classroom Nina continually sees this doppelgänger acting out her hopes and horrors. At the climax of a lesbian fantasy Nina’s lover Lily turns into Nina’s lover Nina: a radical rewrite of the old idea of the dancer as Narcissus.

Nina sacrifices her old self to reach perfection. To play the black swan (the free, sexually-awakened), she cannot be the white swan (innocent and perfect).

The tragedy of Nina, and of many young performers and athletes, is that perfection in one area of life has led to sacrifices in many of the others. At a young age, everything becomes focused on pleasing someone (a parent, a coach, a partner), and somehow it gets wired in that the person can never be pleased. One becomes perfect in every area except for life itself.

Nina’s desire for perfection is manifested in seeing herself as the black swan in reflections of mirrors, through hallucinatory scenes and even in her rival Lily. As she yearns to become the black swan, she loses control and begins to descend into madness and self- destruction.