Natal­ie Port­man goes to space in the Lucy in the Sky trailer

Noah Haw­ley has made TV a weird­er place with his much-tout­ed work on the Far­go spin­off series and the com­ic-book adap­ta­tion Legion, mix­ing mor­dant humor with fits of sur­re­al­ism and dense sym­bol­o­gy. Where’s he got left to go but to the final fron­tier of cin­e­ma, and the oth­er final fron­tier of out­er space?

His first fea­ture film stars Natal­ie Port­man as astro­naut Lucy Cola, who’s got a Bucky Lar­son hair­cut and a libido to match. Though she may be mar­ried to the good and decent Drew (Haw­ley favorite Dan Stevens), she feels trans­formed by the intense expe­ri­ence of out­er-atmos­phere trav­el, and the only per­son who seems to under­stand is her hand­some col­league Mark (Jon Hamm).

Of course they strike up an for­bid­den romance, but what Lucy doesn’t see com­ing is the affair with­in the affair, or the rage that turn­ing from the jil­ter to the jilt­ed awak­ens her. Desta­bi­lized a bit more with every pass­ing hour, she grows volatile and per­haps even dangerous.

Per­haps you remem­ber the sto­ry of Lisa Nowak, the astro­naut who noto­ri­ous­ly donned an adult dia­per so that she could com­plete a bath­room-break-free trip from Hous­ton to Flori­da in record time. She has since denied mak­ing use of Depends or any equiv­a­lent under­gar­ment, and the item in ques­tion makes no appear­ance in the trail­er, but the inter­per­son­al dynam­ics of the premise clear­ly mark her as the basis for the Lucy character.

While this film rep­re­sents a mile­stone in Hawley’s career, it also marks a major turn­ing point in the oeu­vre of Port­man. In the thick Tex­an drawl of Lucy, she com­pletes her infor­mal Real­ly Going For It With These Accents Tril­o­gy begun by Jack­ie and Vox Lux. Many actors fret about find­ing their voice; Port­man frets about the pub­lic remem­ber­ing what hers sounds like.

Lucy in the Sky has yet to set a release date for the US or UK.