Vox Lux

This is what happens when an arthouse film kinda fails to have any ideas but never the less goes ahead anyway. There’s certainly themes here – about fame, about violence, about art and about the loss of innocence. But none are really drawn out in a particularly compelling way – it’s all gestures towards significance rather than building something more robust that might really say something compelling. Natalie Portman shares the central role of Celeste with Raffey Cassidy – Cassidy playing her in the first half as a young girl emerging into the world of pop music, Portman as the jaded star who’s attempting a relaunch. They don’t particularly match each other, and Portman also suffers from a more exaggerated Long Island accent than the more reticent Cassidy – there’s a general crudity to the performance that doesn’t suit her at all well. Writer/director Brady Corbett never really finds a compelling reason to tell this story, and slavering over the presentation a few pretentious monologues from Willem Defoe does not help. I stuck around in hope that something clever or enlightening or skilled would emerge, or possibly at least a minor surprise at the end. And while, yes, there is one particularly stupid twist in the tale, it’s not enough to recommend this as anything but a mediocre waste of time.