Vox lux

Celeste (Raffey Cassidy och Natalie Portman) är med om en skolskjutning i staden New Brighton i USA och blir allvarligt skadad, men överlever med en hårsmån. På hennes vänners begravning framför hon en sång som hon och hennes syster Eleanor (Stacy Martin) har skrivit. Sången blir startskottet på en karriär inom showbusiness där hennes manager (Jude Law) leder henne genom karriären. När hon spelat in fler låtar och dessa har skickats ut till radiostationer och de visat intresse så tar managern henne direkt till nästa nivå; att få träffa en svensk musikproducent för att fixa lite låtar till Celeste. Vad som kommer härnäst är en snabb genomgång om hur Sverige introducerade den kommunala musiksskolan och hur detta sedan ledde fram till dess världsherravälde på den internationella musikscenen:

Managern: "Listen, I'm sending you home for a week or two. I want you to rest up, 'cause guess what? I'm taking you to Stockholm after the break."
Celeste: "Really?"
Managern: "It's in Europe."
Celeste: "I know."
Managern: "They want enough tracks for an album. I want you working with this guy. The best. You'll know his stuff when you hear it. He's written everything. Hits. I told him, make space for you. He said okay if we come to him."
Celeste: "Oh."
Managern: "So whatever you got... half-written, ideas, whatever you got... let's go lay it down."
Celeste: "You hear that, Ellie?"
Ellie: "See? I told you you'd get really big."

Berättaren (Willem Dafoe): "Following a short visit home with their parents, Celeste's manager had the girls' passports expedited, and the three of them set flight for an unfamiliar if not particularly exotic foreign city, where they would go on to have many uniquely first experiences. Stockholm was home to what business scholars and economic geographers call an industry cluster, an agglomeration of talent, business infrastructure, and competing firms all swirling around one industry in one place. In the 1940s, church leaders and cultural conservatives rallied together around a solemn mission: to safeguard the  country's youth against the degenerate music that was being piped in from America. To combat this threat, municipal schools of music spread across the country, offering morally uplifting instruction in classical music. One thing would eventually lead to another. Born at the height of this morally uplifting boom at the close of the second war, Swedish producer Tor Erik Romstad was initially skeptical but grew increasingly fond of the inseparable sisters. And though he considered himself a beat-up old atheist that had been phoning it in for some time in the pop music game, he found the girls' kind-hearted devotion to God, music, and most importantly, one another, to be altogether inspiring. Over the course of five weeks, he would turn out some of his career's most addictive hooks and melodies. So far oblivious to the impending deluge of notoriety these tracks would soon afford her, Celeste primarily enjoyed getting all this one-on-one time with Eleanor. They never could've dreamed they would one day casually travel to Europe together, unsupervised and unattended. On weekends, Eleanor enjoyed playing the role of the big sister by taking Celeste around to the nearby bars and local dance clubs. Before the massacre at New Brighton, Eleanor might never have dared to share these more disgraceful aspects of her recreational appetites with her young sibling. But considering all the suffering Celeste had endured, she was surely old enough now to engage in the more pleasurable parts of adulthood also. Celeste felt alive, creative, and autonomous, in command of her own destiny."

Besöket i Stockholm är en lång snabbspolning som drar tankarna till Jonas Åkerlunds berömda video till Madonnas låt "Ray of Light". Men till bilderna spelas vad som verkar vara en gammal norsk barnsång, vilket kanske hänger ihop med att filmen är delvis skriven av norskan Mona Fastvold som också har en roll.