VOX LUX SPEC D: Brady Corbet. U.S. 112 min. Sep 10, 2 pm, Roy Thomson. See listing. Rating: NNNN
Pop music is often positioned as escapist entertainment, but what exactly does it mean to provide escapism for people when you have a lot you are trying to escape from? Corbet’s second film shows the ways violent events and pop culture can become entwined in media narratives, and the suffocating and hermetic world of fame.
Vox Lux stars Natalie Portman as Celeste, a singer who rocketed up the charts shortly after surviving a mass shooting as a teen. The first half portrays young Celeste (played by Raffey Cassidy) moving forward from trauma to focus on her career, aided by her songwriting sister (Stacy Martin) and manager (Jude Law). The second part catches up with 31-year-old Celeste (Portman), who is barely holding her personal life and career together, and takes place in a hotel over the course of a single afternoon leading up to a tour kick-off.
Corbet’s directing style is brisk and ostentatious, evoking gritty 70s actioners one moment and golden-era Hollywood romance films the next. The film is full of unpredictable visual and musical flourishes (Scott Walker and Sia worked on the soundtrack) that makes it thrilling to take in, and settles into a more focused pacing in the second act as we tail Portman – mesmerizing as a cross between Britney and Liz Taylor – around the hotel. (Deadpan narration by Willem DaFoe feels like one narrative device too many.)
Though not giving us a backstage drama per se, Corbet takes the audience through the ins and outs of a pop star schedule – the press roundtable scene is dead on – to show how behind the scenes events morph when media is involved. Things grow increasingly claustrophobic and manic, culminating in a final shot that perfectly expresses the power of pop music.
