Vox Lux
VOX LUX follows the rise of ‘Celeste’ (Natalie Portman) from the ashes of a major national tragedy to pop superstardom. This 15-year-odyssey tracks the important cultural evolutions of the 21st Century through Celeste’s eyes.
Actor Brady Corbet’s second feature as writer-director tracks its heroine’s path from the tragedy that defines her adolescence to the adulation that circumscribes her adulthood. The film begins in 1999 with teenage sisters Celeste and Eleanor, who have survived a seismic, violent tragedy. The sisters compose and perform a song about their experience, making something lovely and cathartic out of catastrophe – while also launching a career.
The sisters draw the attention of a passionate manager and are rapidly catapulted into fame and fortune, with Celeste as the star and Eleanor the creative anchor. By the film’s second half, set in 2017, the now 31-year-old Celeste is mother to a teenage daughter of her own and struggling to navigate a career fraught with scandals when another act of terrifying violence demands her attention.