After surviving a school shooting, teenage Celeste pens and performs a eulogistic song which goes viral, rapidly hurtling her towards pop stardom. In an ambitious narrative arc set over several decades, Vox Lux follows Celeste (in a bravura performance from Natalie Portman) as she indulges in and succumbs to the various vices of fame. Appearing at once as an image of survival and a figure of pathos caught in the aftershocks of tragedy, Celeste is a forceful presence in this sardonic melodrama about 21st-century celebrity, spectacle and violence.