TIFF 2018: Natalie Portman Highlights the Darkness of Fame in Vox Lux Movie

Natalie Portman gets bold with her new film, Vox Lux, about the life of a young woman juggling a scandal-ridden music career, a teenage daughter and an overbearing manager played by Jude Law.

Vox Lux begins in 1999 with teenage sisters Celeste (Raffey Cassidy) and Eleanor (Stacy Martin), who has survived a seismic, violent tragedy. The sisters compose and perform a song at 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 (Law) and are rapidly catapulted into fame and fortune, with Celeste as the star and Eleanor the creative anchor. But as she gets older,  the 31-year-old Celeste (Portman), now a mother to a teenage daughter (Cassidy), struggles to navigate her career fraught with scandals when another act of terrifying violence demands her attention.

“Vox Lux is the most political film I’ve made,” said Portman while at the Venice Film Festival. “I don’t think any two people will leave the screening with the same feeling. It will leave people debating,” Portman told Variety. 

The Oscar-winning actress said she watched documentaries about pop stars to prepare for the role. She said she also watched videos of people who survived school shootings has but was already familiar with the enduring trauma that mass violence can cause in people because she has “very close friends who have been victims of terror.”

Vox Lux makes its North American premiere at TIFF 2018.