Vox Lux

Starring: Natalie Portman, Jude Law, Raffey Cassidy, Christopher Abbott, Stacy Martin

Director: Brady Corbet

I will be spoiling plot points in this review. You have been warned. 14 year old Celeste (Raffey Cassidy) is a survivor of a brutal school shooting. When asked to speak at the memorial service, she is unable to put her thoughts together in a speech and instead with the help of her sister, Eleanor (Stacy Martin), writes a song. The song quickly gains the attention of the music industry. She signs a deal with a well known manager (Jude Law) and is whisked away to record an album, tour Europe, and film a music video. Fifteen years later, as she is beginning a new tour for her 6th album Vox Lux, her music video ends up being the potential inspiration for another shooting in Croatia. Now 31, Celeste must balance trying to raise her daughter (also played by Raffey Cassidy) while answering questions about her past and deciding if the show should go on. It’s very interesting that I watched Her Smell so close to seeing this. While the films focus on different aspects and times in their protagonist’s careers, both provide psychologically intense analysis into not only artist’s lives, but also how it affects those around them. Given the state of the nation we live in, Vox Lux opens with a bold choice: the key event to Celeste’s back story is a school shooting. If you can get past the the opening unpleasantness, there are a lot of themes the film will provide for you to unpack and process. First and foremost, it is not only a damning indictment of the music industry, but of the culture we ultimately live in. Both seem happy to place blame across the board: the music industry for capitalizing on a tragedy to make money and the culture for supporting Celeste and pushing her music to the top of the charts and helping feed into the money making machine. Loss of innocence is also a key theme. Natalie Portman is as great as you’ve heard she is, although she doesn’t show up in the film until about 40 minutes in. Having an actress of her caliber really helps bring Celeste to life, as does Jude Law as her morally ambiguous manager. The choice to have young Celeste and Albertine both be played by Raffey Cassidy is an odd one on the surface, but ultimately worked for me and provides an interesting topic of conversation about the idea of choices. The style of the film unfortunately didn’t quite work for me, a almost faux documentary complete with a narrator who either tells us more about what is going on in Celeste’s head or gives us weird trivia about her. The narrator is usually speaking over scenes that are being sped through in some sort of time lapse. One of the big moments Corbet choses to do this is during Celeste’s loss of innocence/sexual awakening while she was 15. Most films wouldn’t have taken this approach, but I’m not sure if it hurt the film to do so.

I’m still not sure how I feel about the film, but it’s definitely sticking with me and I have to give it credit for that. There are themes and conversation starters a plenty and the film is content letting the audience take what they want from it. There is a reveal very late in the film that I am not sure I buy or if it helps what the film is trying to say, or if it’s really trying to say anything at all. B-