Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga in a surprising dark work centered on Arthur Fleck and his alter ego made up as a clown. Between animation, prison drama, procedural thriller and melodrama, director Todd Phillips signs a courageous feature film in which music and dance are the protagonists. The film will be released in theaters in Italy in October
DC Comics’ most famous villain has reappeared at the Lido. It is usually inadvisable to return to places where you have had a great time. In 2019, the title directed by Todd Phillips won the Golden Lion. At the Biennale cinema, repeating a success is very complex, almost impossible. But the clown prince is feverish for risk. So Joker: Madness for Two is in competition at the 2024 Venice Film Festival (LIVE). That’s entertainment, but not only. When madness gets tough, the madmen start to mad. Because this sequel may not be liked (of course, dissent is legitimate in every field), however it is certainly not a mere marketing operation. In short, it went badly for the a priori detractors, the indiscriminate critics, the shrewd and know-it-all wiseguys ready to massacre a work based on a trailer or some indiscretion gleaned from the Web. You can say anything about the film, except that the work is clever, or worse, scripted by Mister Algorithm and directed by Miss Google Trends.
Between dream and reality, the plot of the film
See Joker: Folie à Deux It’s like booking a vacation to the Seychelles and finding yourself on the snow-capped peaks of Aspen. The opening lines are already a kind of electroshock. A delightful vintage Looney Tunes-style cartoon, with Arthur Fleck as the Joker fighting with his evil shadow to decide who will perform in the show, while the photo of the late Murray Franklin hangs in the dressing room. A Killing Joke that opens the gates of Arkham Hospital where Arthur is locked up awaiting trial for the murder of five people (the world is unaware that the prisoner suffocated his sick mother with a pillow). It’s raining cats and dogs in that leaden and suffocating asylum. The first line spoken in the film is by Phoenix: “Can I have a cigarette?” You smoke as if there were no tomorrow in this film, perhaps because many characters will not have a future. Obsessed with drugs, Joker seems like a dead man walking, the risk of ending up fried in an electric chair is very high. They even made a TV movie about Arthur’s tragic story, but he never saw it. They didn’t let him. Instead, the prisoner crosses paths with Lee Quinzell, known to most as Harley Quinn. Sometimes it only takes a moment for things to change. For the first time Fleck feels seen (you know: to be is to be perceived), understood and even loved. While his lawyer bases his entire defense on mental infirmity to avoid death for his client, Joker loses himself in a world of fantasy, dance and music, and outside the asylum and the court, the crowd idolizes him as a revolutionary leader. But the prosecutor Harvey Dent (who will one day transform into the villain Two-Face) is determined to have Arthur sentenced to capital punishment. The jury will deliver the verdict. But sometimes the future manifests itself beyond the courtroom.
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Venice Film Festival 2024, Lady Gaga and Phoenix Day
Music as an added character
Already in the 2019 film, Arthur had a song in his head, a confused and (un)happy compilation that unfolded in some solitary ballet. Instead in Joker: Madness for Twothe notes and voices are transfigured into a symphony, into a choreography, into an authentic show. The soundtrack is a Greek chorus, an added character. And they are the songs, which in all probability the multiple murderer listened to together with his mother. Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga reinterpret those classics in an original and divine way: from That’s Entertainment a Gonna built a Mountain. The carefree hits of Judy Garland, Sammy Davis Jr., Frank Sinatra break down the walls, open the cages. Only you can’t escape from yourself. We ourselves are our demons. And it will be a laugh that will bury us
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Lady Gaga in Venice for the Film Festival with her boyfriend
The world is a stage
Joaquin Phoenix’s skeletal body (he slimmed down to a crawl for the film) wounds the screen with his pointed collarbones, that spine seems about to tear the aspiring comedian’s back. Only in dreams does it stop raining in Gotham. The cell fades into a club. The world becomes a stage. White lead and lipstick cover every fragility, every psychosis. Between tuxedos and long dresses, Joker and Harley dance their passionate waltz. Who knows if it will be the last? The nightmare of a requiem, of a funeral march looms. So go with the makeup and hair. It’s time to go on stage. We need masks to forget who we are. By dint of wearing them, we no longer know what is real. And if Lady Gaga’s Harley Quinn is much more similar to the heroine of a Tennessee Williams play than to a member of the Suicide Squadthe film seems to cross every cinematic genre except the comic book movie, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Todd Phillips risks everything, demystifies. Maybe no one after this sequel will want to dress up as the Joker on Halloween. Because this sequel is, in essence, the story of Arthur and not of Batman’s most dangerous antagonist. The clown’s laughter turns into tears over his broken love. As Fassbinder said: films free the mind. And the hope is that Joker: Madness for Two free us forever from carbon-copy sequels. Even the Joker from comics and graphic novels would agree.
Cinema
The Venice 2024 red carpet, votes on the looks, from Lady Gaga to Castellitto
With the eighth day of the Festival, fashionistas have already collected many memorable moments. But it’s not over until Lady Gaga decides it’s really over. With the look she chose for the premiere of “Joker: Folie à Deux”, a Dior dress and a hat that soars towards the Venice sky, the superstar has raised the parameters of the art of method dressing to unrivaled levels. No one like her By Vittoria Romagnuolo
In Venice, the eighth day of the 2024 Film Festival sees the red carpet protagonists in the early afternoon Benjamin I could e Stefan Creponmain male interpreters of Jplay with fireFrench film competing for the Golden Lion by the Coulin sisters. Twenty-seven and twenty-eight years old for the two young actors who arrive at the official presentation of the film in jackets, with a slim-cut suit, the first, oversized, the second. For both the shirt is unbuttoned but in any case, the style is spot on. Rating: 7.5 for Voisin. 8 for Crepon
The sisters wear black Muriel e Delphine Coulin, directors and screenwriters of Play with fire. For them too, the Venice Film Festival is an opportunity to show off essential looks, which tell of a casual approach to style. Rating: 6.5 (for both)
Vincent Lindon shows off all his charm as an icon of French cinema in Venice. In a tailored and soft anthracite suit and tie, he shows he can defy time and fashion. Rating: 8
