Review: Joker Folie À Deux pairs Joachin Phoenix with Lady Gaga ...
Did you hear the one about the R-rated comic-book movie that sparked a collective cultural meltdown, made a billion dollars and finally won its star an Oscar?
Depending on who you asked, Todd Phillips's entertaining, occasionally inspired Joker was either a dangerous incel manifesto, a bold analogy for contemporary America, or just a shameless pastiche of old Martin Scorsese movies — as cynically designed and ideologically vague as the superhero product it seemed to be trolling.
In short, everyone seemed to be experiencing their Joker moment. It was all pretty funny to watch.
That Joker was intended as a standalone movie is evident from the new sequel, Folie À Deux (that's "madness for two," next time you're ordering at a French restaurant), a quasi-musical courtroom drama that has little interest in advancing any kind of story. In fact, it's even more deliberately obtuse and anti-crowd-pleasing than its predecessor.
The movie's opening sequence — animated in the style of an old Warner Bros cartoon — sets the deflated tone, all whimsy curdled into bloody, brutal miserablism. It's one of an endless series of delusions springing from the mind of Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix), the failed comic who's been languishing in Gotham City's Arkham Asylum since the murder spree that ended with the on-air death of a talk show host.
Arthur Fleck (Phoenix) falls for Lee Quinzel (Lady Gaga) during a visit to Arkham's minimum-security wing. (Supplied: Warner Bros)
Arthur — who seems to have swapped his Taxi Driver cosplay for an emaciated version of Robert De Niro in Cape Fear — is awaiting trial for his crimes, and the prosecution, led by assistant D.A. Harvey Dent (Industry's Harry Lawtey), is angling for the death penalty.
On a day trip to Arkham's minimum-security wing, Arthur falls for Lee Quinzel (Lady Gaga), a bleached-blonde, kohl-eyed inmate who gets his attention by singing Judy Garland's 'Get Happy' and telling tales of her violent, abusive childhood.
But he can't read her Joker face. The future Harley Quinn isn't all that she seems; she's a woman drawn to a freak show for reasons that are never quite clear.
"I wanna see the real you," Lee tells Arthur, as she applies his Joker makeup. It's the kind of moment that captures the duality of self that comic book movies do at their best, and Gaga brings a real, unpredictable sensuality to her performance.
Folie À Deux might be read as director Todd Phillips's attempt to smuggle in a serious study of mental illness under the guise of an edgy franchise spin-off. (Supplied: Warner Bros)
Soon, Lee and Arthur (whose singing is nearly as bad as his comedy) are lost in a shared fantasy of song and dance, crooning the Bee Gee's 'To Love Somebody' in a warped approximation of the Sonny and Cher show, or belting out soul numbers that could be imported from the Elvis Comeback Special. He sees dreary prison umbrellas turn the shade of Jacques Demy's Cherbourg; she whispers through the prison glass with a gorgeous version of the Carpenters' 'Close to You'.
Meanwhile, there are so many needle-drops of 'That's Life' that you expect Frank Sinatra to rise from the grave and put out a mob hit on everyone involved.
Because these supposedly liberating — if strangely joyless — passages are essentially the characters' delusion, Folie À Deux never commits to being a full-tilt musical, instead turning into a long courtroom dirge as Arthur goes to trial with an insanity plea. (It's not without its moments: "I won't have you turning my courtroom into a circus," the judge says to the man in clown-face makeup at one point.)
Whenever Gaga and Phoenix aren't tap dancing against a theatrical backdrop or swooning before some gigantic fake moon, the movie is a slog that even its leading man struggles to energise. When Arthur fires the city defender (Catherine Keener) to act as his own lawyer, for example, his split-personality interrogations of the witness feel like a desperate grasp on Phoenix's part — and mostly serve as a reminder of how much funnier Jim Carrey was being at war with himself in the courtroom.
Arthur Fleck (Phoenix) is questioned by Paddy Meyers (Steve Coogan) as Fleck's lawyer, Maryanne Stewart (Catherine Keener), looks on. (Supplied: Warner Bros)
Despite its corny, childhood-trauma backstory, the first Joker managed to cultivate a genuine sense of unease, culminating in an electrifying climax that suggested its character might explode in any direction.
Though the sequel teases its audience with the promise of the Joker they know and love, it ultimately leaves them as despondent — and as confused — as its anti-hero.
Even more than the first film, Folie À Deux might be read as Phillips's attempt to smuggle in a serious study of mental illness under the guise of an edgy franchise spin-off. And to its credit, the movie does puncture both the Joker myth and superhero movies' false binary of good and evil, while exposing the sickness of a society — and a mass media — that exploits mental illness for entertainment.
Folie À Deux is a slog that even its leading man struggles to energise. (Supplied: Warner Bros)
If that sounds rich coming from a multi-million dollar studio film, well, there's the rub. Folie À Deux might avoid populist kicks, but it also reveals the limit to Phillips's subversion of our expectations — and the extent to which a comic-book villain can be used for rote psychological insights.
By the time Arthur is answering his own "Knock knock" joke with a depressive "Arthur Fleck who?" (accompanied by a sombre piano chord from composer Hildur Guðnadóttir) , it's hard to tell (let alone care) whether the movie is a deadpan mockery of phoney Hollywood existentialism, or just feeble writing masquerading as psychodrama.
Joker has been many things over the years — a Clown Prince of Crime, an agent of chaos, a Prince fan — but this is the first time he's been the one thing those prior incarnations would dread: a crashing bore.
Where's Batman when you really need him?
