Vox Lux Movie Review
Natalie Portman stars in director Brady Corbet’s musical drama, ‘Vox Lux.’

Title: Vox Lux

Director: Brady Corbet 

Cast: Natalie Portman, Raffey Cassidy, Jude Law, Stacy Martin, Jennifer Ehle, William Dafoe.

‘Vox Lux’ is the latest cinematic endeavor of a darling of the Venice Film Festival: Brady Corbet (who won Best Debut Film and Best Director with the movie ‘The Childhood of a Leader’ in 2015).

The conventional storyline of an ingenue girl who becomes corrupted by the world of showbiz, is commonplace in content but jazzy in terms of style. We observe the rise from the ashes of a major national tragedy to pop superstardom. The film — narrated by the suave voice of William Dafoe — spans throughout 18 years of Celeste’s life (from 1999 to 2007).

Natalie Portman is effective in portraying the histrionic and frenzied 30-year-old Celeste. An interesting choice made by the director was to have Raffey Cassidy play both Young Celeste and her adolescent daughter, Albertine. The latter — born when Celeste was very young — echoes the lost wholesomeness of her mother, when she was a teenager who survived a violent tragedy and began her pop-career merely by singing at a memorial service. Stacy Martin is also exceptional in playing Ellie, Celeste’s sister, from the years of their adolescence throughout their adulthood, embodying the transformation of their relationship. If Eleanor as the elder sibling had everything in control when her younger sibling was an ordinary girl, after Celeste’s stardom Ellie becomes her exploited assistant. Also Jude Law as the pop-star’s Manager and Jennifer Ehle as the Publicist play their role by the book.

Despite the good acting, the story plays a familiar tune. And yet it is enriched by the choice of medium (the film was shot on 35mm) and the original songs by Sia and Scott Walker. ‘Vox Lux’ is visually flamboyant — from the costumes to the rhythmical editing, that create an experience that is pleasurable for the eye. This pop-music gouache, thus becomes a conventional and predictable emblem of the cult of celebrities and the media machine that operates behind them. 

Technical: B+

Acting: B+

Story: B-

Overall: B

Written by: Chiara Spagnoli Gabardi

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Director Brady Corbet's musical drama, 'Vox Lux'
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By Chiara Spagnoli Gabardi

Chiara Spagnoli Gabardi, is a film critic, culture and foreign affairs reporter, screenwriter, film-maker and visual artist. She studied in a British school in Milan, graduated in Political Sciences, got her Masters in screenwriting and film production and studied at the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute in New York and Los Angeles. Chiara’s “Material Puns” use wordplay to weld the title of the painting with the materials placed on canvas, through an ironic reinterpretation of Pop-Art, Dadaism and Ready Made. She exhibited her artwork in Milan, Rome, Venice, London, Oxford, Paris and Manhattan. Chiara works as a reporter for online, print, radio and television and also as a film festival PR/publicist. As a bi-lingual journalist (English and Italian), who is also fluent in French and Spanish, she is a member of the Foreign Press Association in New York, the Women Film Critics Circle in New York, the Italian Association of Journalists in Milan and the Federation of Film Critics of Europe and the Mediterranean. Chiara is also a Professor of Phenomenology of Contemporary Arts at IED University in Milan.

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