The road is as familiar as it is well traveled. An ingénue enchants us all with her puckish charm. Half a decade later, she strikes it rich with a Marvel/Star Wars project or three. Perhaps the occasional award bait falls into her lap, but, time being what it is, every offer soon begins to look enticing. One minute she’s accepting an Oscar for headlining a Darren Aronofsky masterpiece. The next she’s married to Murray from Stranger Things in a tedious racism-of-the-week miniseries. 

Such is the career arc of Natalie Portman, the early-aughts “it” girl turned edutainment antihero. In her most recent serious project, 2023’s May December, the Israeli American played an actress sucking the metaphorical blood of a Mary Kay Letourneau type she hoped to portray on film. Portman’s latest role is as a housewife-cum-journalist investigating the murder of a black woman in midcentury Baltimore. In both instances, the former starlet’s character exists to critique “white female privilege,” a leftist bugbear that transforms anthropological interest into “harm.” Is it surprising to find a performer of Portman’s fame in such parts? It shouldn’t be. Had the Black Swan star passed, Alicia Vikander or Elizabeth Olsen would surely have come aboard.