Pop goes the fantasy: how Vox Lux shows the darker side of music

While the Oscar-buzzed remake of A Star is Born stuck to its romantically old-fashioned roots, the Natalie Portman-starring drama offers a toxic alternative

Who’d be a pop star, eh? If there’s one thing we’ve learned from cinema in 2018 – A Star is Born, Vox Lux, even the PG-rated neutering of Freddie Mercury’s legend in Bohemian Rhapsody – it’s that the gleaming lights of the music industry can emit a pretty harsh glow when you’re under them, that the warm embrace of a crowd can turn to a stranglehold in the blink of a heavily made-up eye. That fame comes at a price is, admittedly, not the hottest of takes: in the movies, it goes back at least as, well, 1932’s What Price Hollywood?, the film that directly bore one of this year’s grit-amid-the-glitter case studies.

Related: Vox Lux review – Natalie Portman powers dark portrait of the fame monster

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from The Guardian https://ift.tt/2RBrhZg
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