Vox Lux (2018)

Directed by Brady Corbet. Starring Natalie Portman, Raffey Cassidy, Jude Law, Jennifer Ehle, Stacy Martin, Micheál Richardson, Christopher Abbott, Meg Gibson, (voice) Willem Dafoe. [R]

A survivor of a shocking tragedy “goes viral” with a tribute song, and her fame provides her a budding music career that furthers the erosion of her innocence; almost two decades later, she’s become a self-destructive, alcohol-and-drug-dependent diva on the verge of a mental breakdown. Split into two halves, with Cassidy playing the protagonist, Celeste, as an ingenuous teenager, and Portman playing her as an exhausted adult, this is a movie that aims to be bold, provocative and controversial solely for the sake of being bold, provocative and controversial, with almost nothing new to say about pop star pressures and toxic celebrity worship. Teeming with nearly equal parts pretentiousness and contempt, its storytelling is as erratic as its subject, with narration (provided by Dafoe) intermittently spelling things out, including a revelation at the end that attempts to shock but comes off as phony, even juvenile. The most promising angle with the material as presented is the perspective of what it’s like for Celeste’s child (also played by Cassidy) to be raised under such strained circumstances, but she’s sidelined and voiceless most of the time. Portman gives it her all, but the characterization is more cartoonish than harrowing, and she chews too hard on an accent that Cassidy barely employed when essaying her younger self. Scott Walker composed the score, the singer-songwriter’s final completed work before his death; all of Celeste’s (intentionally?) insipid electronic pop songs were co-written by co-executive producer Sia Furler, better known as just “Sia.” Dedicated “in memory of Jonathan Demme.”

36/100