Vox Lux

Writer/Director Brady Corbet’s Vox Lux would make an interesting case study in how not to make a movie.

Not that it’s a bad movie.  It’s just that he’s tried to fuse two different movies into one.

 

The first, and more successful film, literally starts off with a bang in a Staten Island school undergoing a mass shooting in 1999.  There is one survivor, Celeste, a 14-year-old girl, excellently played by Raffey Cassidy.

She and her sister (Stacy Martin) create a song that makes Celeste a young celebrity and, eventually, brings her to fame, with a bit of drama about the older sister being somewhat overshadowed.

All of this is engaging and well done.

Then, more than half way through the story, we jump 17 years and Natalie Portman takes over the role of Celeste, who is now an alcoholic, drug-riddled, unlikeable character with a daughter, Albertine, played by Raffey Cassidy.

The problem is that it’s not initially clear that Albertine is her daughter because she looks and dresses just like young Celeste and is a bigger person than Natalie Portman. So, without the proper intro, we lose some of what’s going on until it’s made clear that she is Celeste’s daughter.

But, we’re still missing how Celeste turned from the girl we cared about into this creature we don’t care about.  Corbet has done a poor job of carrying the audience forward.

Now, there is mass shooting in Croatia in which the perpetrators wore masks like those used in one of Celeste’s videos, and we’re told she has to make a comeback so as not to lose her fans.  ???

And, we’re wishing we could be back in the initial story.  But, we’ve been promised that Natalie Portman and Judd Law were supposed to be in this movie.  But, at this point, we really don’t care.

It’s not that Corbet is a bad director.  It’s just like his character Celeste.  He makes poor choices and doesn’t know how to quit while he’s ahead.  

Still, I give Vox Lux a 3.3 out of 5, mostly because of Raffey Cassidy’s fine performance.