BEFORE: Willem Dafoe carries over from "What Happened to Monday", even though he serves only as the narrator of this film (according to the IMDB credits) - that counts, too. And I realize this film really should have been part of the January line-up, it would have fit neatly between "Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium" and "Annihilation" - and if I'd done that, the romance chain would have begun on Feb. 1 instead of Jan. 31, so damn, things might have lined up a little better if only I'd been more on top of things. I'm betting this Academy screener had arrived at one of my offices by then, but probably I hadn't taken the time to sort through them yet. So it maybe SHOULD have fit into the chain there, but instead I'm watching it here, and everything from here on is going to be considered properly aligned and fixed going forward. OK?
But you may have noticed that I watched "What Happened to Monday" on a Monday, and now I'm reviewing this one on Wednesday - so you may ask, "What happened to Tuesday?" Well, I went out on Monday evening to see "Captain Marvel", and then didn't have it in me to watch another film in the early morning hours of Tuesday - plus I wanted to get my "Captain Marvel" review typed up, and I'll be posting that in just a few days, I swear. This Willem Dafoe chain is leading me right to it. So no Tuesday film this week, and skipping a day also helps me line up my movies for next week with the iTunes rental release schedule, since I can't seem to locate the screener for "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse" as I'd hoped. I can only do what I can do.
THE PLOT: An unusual set of circumstances brings unexpected success to a pop star.
AFTER: Well, in the last film there was one actress playing seven roles, and in this one an actress plays two roles, but in a very different way. "Vox Lux" is split into two sections, and the actress who plays the young (high-school) version of the lead character, Celeste, appears also in the second section, which is set 16 or 17 years later, as Celeste's teen daughter. That seems to be its own acting challenge, because as Celeste she has to start out as a shy girl, who gradually gains confidence as her singing career takes off, and then in the 2nd half she's got to be the normal shy girl again, obviously living in the shadow of her famous mother, and all that that entails.
But I'm getting ahead of myself here. Let's start with the first half of the film, which I think showed a great deal of promise - and surprisingly, I'm saying this about the non-Natalie Portman half. Celeste is a normal girl who finds herself at the center of a school shooting in the late 1990's, but she manages to survive, and from what I can gather, not a lot of other kids did. At a memorial service, she and her sister Eleanor perform a song that they wrote to deal with all of their emotional fallout, the song gets played by the news media and becomes a hit single across the country. The two sisters get a business manager, and a record deal, and go to Europe to work with various record producers and engineers.
While in Europe, which of course has a lower legal drinking age and is much more free-wheeling when it comes to partying and such, the sisters are exposed to a whole new world. Celeste ends up very hungover when it's time to return to the U.S. and film a music video, so the manager gets very upset, because the girls' parents have entrusted him to look after them while traveling. The first half ends with the news of the 9/11 attacks, so the story is really book-ended by terrorist activities, and then...
We catch up again with the girls 16 or 17 years later, when Celeste now looks like Natalie Portman and her teen daughter looks a lot like Celeste did before (again, it's a case where one actress shifted over to another role, but in a way that makes sense, not like how David Lynch does it...) Celeste is a mega-star on the level of, let's say, Lady Gaga or Sia (who coincidentally wrote a number of the songs that Celeste performs) and on the eve of her big comeback concert (following some scandal, which is referenced but not exactly detailed...), there's yet another terrorist attack. This one happened in Eastern Europe, and it was carried out by gunmen who were wearing masks identical to the ones seen in one of Celeste's videos, so it's a potential publicity nightmare for Celeste and her tour.
Outside of this little twist, though, everything in the 2nd half feels like something we've seen so many times where rock and pop stars are concerned. Celeste is egotistical, very rude to the press (at the exact time she's supposed to be very, very nice to them) and states bluntly that the news of the attack will not affect her tour plans or her performances, even though all of the facts of the incident have not come to light. Meanwhile she's always drunk or on some kind of medication or both, and slowly we learn that she's got a very complicated relationship with both her daughter and her sister - who's essentially been the one raising her daughter, because she can't be bothered to do it. Typical pop-star diva behavior, right? Plus when she's not avoiding the paparazzi she's being very rude to restaurant managers who just maybe want a photo to hand in the diner.
Despite her chemical indulgences, Celeste's entourage is able to get her to the show and make sure that she's both conscious and emotionally ready to perform - this takes no small effort, so if you're wondering why the last concert you went to didn't start on time, well, now you know. But I can't help but think I missed something here, like what was the deal with the manager - was he having sex with either Celeste or her sister in the first half, and was he secretly the father of Albertine in the 2nd part? I couldn't tell for sure, so perhaps it's just a working theory. But that's the problem, the film was so genuine and forthcoming in the first part, and so oblique and confusing in the second part. I get that this was supposed to represent the vast sea change in Celeste's personality over time, but it was still frustrating after factoring this into the equation.
File this one under "A Star Is Boring"...
Also starring Natalie Portman (last seen in "Annihilation"), Jude Law (last seen in "I Heart Huckabees"), Raffey Cassidy (last seen in "Allied"), Stacy Martin, Jennifer Ehle (last seen in "The Fundamentals of Caring"), Maria Dizzia (last seen in "While We're Young"), Christopher Abbott (last seen in "A Most Violent Year"), Meg Gibson, Daniel London (last seen in "Patch Adams"), Micheal Richardson, Matt Servitto (last seen in "No Reservations"), Leslie Silva, Logan Riley Bruner
RATING: 3 out of 10 back-up dancers
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