Vox Lux review: A startling film that combines social history with pop star psychodrama

Dir: Brady Corbet. Starring: Natalie Portman, Raffey Cassidy, Stacy Martin, Jennifer Ehle. Cert 15, 104 mins

Natalie Portman gives her fiercest, most memorable performance since Black Swan in Brady Corbet’s enjoyably subversive satire about a troubled pop star whose loss of innocence mirrors the fall from grace of the US itself. Portman’s character, Celeste, is certainly one of the most objectionable figures she has played: a pampered, hard-drinking drug-taking “floozy” whose appearance and high-handed behaviour rekindle memories of Liz Taylor and Joan Crawford at their monstrous worst.

Writer-director Corbet has a distinctive and sharp-edged directorial style. He approaches his material here in the same mock portentous way that he depicted the youth of the Hitler-like youngster in his previous feature, The Childhood of a Leader. Willem Dafoe’s solemn voiceover wouldn’t be out of place in a documentary about the death camps. The irony is that he is telling the story of the rise of a Britney Spears-like diva.

Vox Lux begins in utterly chilling fashion with a Columbine-style high school massacre. Celeste (played as a schoolgirl by teenage English actress Raffey Cassidy) is a survivor and also seemingly one of the few close friends of the killer. At a memorial service for the victims, she sings a song, channels all the collective grief of the country by doing so – and is immediately catapulted to nationwide fame. Early on, at least, she is “kind and full of grace”, even if she does have a seemingly more talented older sister, Eleanor (Stacy Martin). Years pass. The innocent young Celeste turns into the very jaded adult played by Portman. She has a teenage daughter, Albertine (confusingly also played by Raffey Cassidy) whom she dotes on but continually risks alienating with her erratic behaviour.

Portman was in Venice for the premiere. At the film’s press conference, she denied that Celeste was a monster, suggesting instead that her character was suffering from trauma. “I’ve definitely been interested in the psychology of what violence does to individuals,” Portman reflected. “Unfortunately, it has been a phenomenon now that in the United States, we experience regularly with the school shootings which are, as Brady has put it to me before, a sort of civil war that we have in the US.” She spoke of the way “small acts of violence can create widespread psychological torment” in American children.

The film’s view of contemporary US culture certainly seems bleak in the extreme. Celebrity gossip and gun-fuelled terrorism go hand in hand. Thankfully, Corbet also has an enjoyably dark sense of humour. Some of the best lines here are given to Jude Law as Celeste’s hard-bitten, cynical manager. “They couldn’t sell a life jacket to Natalie Wood,” he sneers contemptuously about the record company’s half-hearted plans for promoting Celeste. Corbet makes fun of the “morally uplifting” music made by Abba and others in Sweden, where Celeste and Albertine have early misadventures with drugs and alcohol.

One moment, Corbet will be showing rock star behaviour at its most indulgent. The next he will throw in references to 9/11 or include a shocking scene of terrorists dressed in masks, slaughtering tourists on a beach in Croatia.

Gradually, it becomes apparent that we are watching a modern retelling of Faust. Celeste has sold her soul to the devil and is making hit records in return.

Portman relishes the chance to play a character who is foul-mouthed, cynical and who quite literally drinks herself blind. (If she can’t get hold of booze, she’ll use household cleaning products instead.) It’s an abrasive and very energetic performance in which, to her credit, she never tries to ingratiate herself with the audience. Celeste is such a compelling character precisely because she is so outspoken and so reckless.

Vox Lux takes pleasure in satirising both stars like Celeste and the celebrity-obsessed media and fans. Celeste sets the bar for general obnoxiousness very high but everybody else behaves badly too, whether restaurant managers aggressively looking for selfies or unscrupulous journalists trying to trip the talent up at press junkets. Celeste realises that solid facts and actual truth are very old-fashioned concepts in a Trump-era America suffering from an information overload. As she tells the media, “You can say whatever you want in this day and age. Who cares?”

Late on, we see Celeste on stage. Surrounded by backing singers, she sings and dances in an extravagantly camp way that Lady Gaga or Beyoncé might have been proud of. (The routine was choreographed by Portman’s husband, choreographer Benjamin Millepied, and the music for the film was written by Scott Walker and pop star, Sia). For all her excesses, Celeste is actually talented. She is also miserable and messed up. The childhood shooting is both the making of her and the most destructive force in her life. “People have been trying to take me down for years but I won’t stay down,” she claims as if she only half believes it.

Corbet’s shifts in style and general morbidity will alienate some audiences but, like Celeste herself, he knows how to put on a show. Vox Lux combines social history with pop star psychodrama in a way that is both startling and highly original.