Like trailers for so many movies set in the outer reaches of space, the first look at Lucy in the Sky goes right for the grandeur.
The feature film directorial debut of Fargo and Legion showrunner Noah Hawley, the movie centers around astronaut Lucy Cola (portrayed by Natalie Portman) and her life-altering experiences in the cosmos. As the trailer opens, Cola is seen floating in space, eyes filled with tears at the enormity of what she sees.
Things start to go sideways, however, when the focus shifts to the residual effects that emerge after Cola has to return to her relatively humdrum life on Earth. As she puts it in the trailer, “everything here looks…so small.”
In search of getting back that high, the character begins an affair with a fellow astronaut, played by Jon Hamm.
Cola is seen drifting further and further from reality as the clip progresses, and it starts to feel uncomfortably like real life. Most of us will never experience the profundity of floating in outer space—but we might encounter people, places, and/or things that will alter our perception of reality to such an extreme degree, anything less starts to not feel like anything at all.
As the trailer comes to a chaotic conclusion, it cuts to Portman, looking composed but clearly harboring all sorts of roiling emotions behind her strained smile, as she simply declares: “I’m fine.”
The movie is loosely based on actual space traveler Lisa Nowak and her real-life “astronaut love triangle,” but Lucy in the Sky is all about the Portman and her simmering, palpable intensity, playing a woman on the verge of a catastrophic meltdown. Her character is made even more otherworldly thanks to a mushroom cap haircut reminiscent of legendary figure skater Dorothy Hamill’s classic “wedge.”
Lucy in the Sky does not have a release date yet, but is expected to hit big screens this year. Watch the trailer below.
