Joker: Folie à deux (2024)
Directed by Todd Phillips
Two years after the events of Joker (2019), Arthur Fleck, now a patient at Arkham State Hospital, falls in love with music therapist Lee. As the duo experiences musical madness through their shared delusions, Arthur’s followers start a movement to liberate him.
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An essay on despair, a testamentary epic beyond all rules, an unrepeatable meteor. Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga competing at Venice 81. Golden Lion?
by Gian Luca Pisacane
To create a legend, one must have the courage to destroy the myth and resurrect it from its ashes. Joker at the Lido won the Golden Lion in 2019, revealing itself as the other side of an imagination to which we had become too indebted. Its gaze was toward Scorsese, Lumet, and only by reflection to comic book films. However, the real twist comes in a sequel that defies all categories, where the only code is a visceral attachment to cinema.
Joker: Folie à deux emerges as the true surprise of the Venice Film Festival. It’s an unexpected film that doesn’t just explore the origins of evil but focuses primarily on redemption. Here, the real curse of the villain is his inability to ever escape his own dimension. To be accepted, he must remain the mask he has created. Joker is a victim of himself and what he has made.
Director Todd Phillips proves to be unconventional. His “monster” is extremely human, close to us. The provocation lies in empathizing with the beast, risking becoming the tormentors in a film where victims blend with murderers. Joker: Folie à deux is a second chapter full of ambition, courageous, breaking out of any mold. The biggest mistake would be trying to label it or confine it within predefined rules.
It would be reductive to call it a film born of a preconceived imagination, a film that tells a love story, a sequel that draws inexorably close to what we know, a tragedy personified within a courtroom. Joker is much more: inventiveness, creativity, nuances. It’s romantic, disenchanted, dives into illusions, flirts with reality, and plunges into madness.
It’s incredible to see how Phillips approaches the musical genre, transforming a comic book maniac into a past star, improvising as a modern-day Fred Astaire. Here, the director has created his most poignant rondo, a merry-go-round full of love-hate dynamics that spirals towards blood and crime. Lady Gaga and Joaquin Phoenix dance through the corridors of Arkham Asylum, their mad characters perhaps forging an indissoluble bond even from a distance, communicating through a single language: music. These are the same notes Arthur Fleck hears in his mind, which suddenly emerge from his head to take center stage.
Joker: Folie à deux is therefore dazzling, perhaps even alien, surpassing the first chapter. It becomes an essay on despair, on the search for an impossible, now hopeless, dream. In the original, we saw the birth of the ultimate antagonist. The film was mistakenly seen as a reactionary story, against the system. And it’s as if Joker: Folie à deux offers the response: society cannot accept stepping out of the superficial, preconceived image it creates of each person.
Phillips thus goes beyond appearances, delving deep, destroying what he created only to breathe new life into it. He reinterprets the mythology linked to the superhero, sketching “the villain we need,” to paraphrase the ending of The Dark Knight. He directs a film that rejects chaos, to transcend revolution through the camera lens. Moving, pyrotechnic, Joker: Folie à deux is an unrepeatable meteor, a testamentary epic, a funeral dance we must embrace. Golden Lion? A shocking fantasy, perhaps unattainable, but one we must believe in.
Cinematografo, September 4, 2024
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Joker: Folie à Deux Gives the Audience What They Want. Or Maybe Not
“Let’s give them what they want,” says Lady Gaga to Joaquin Phoenix in the sequel to the film that won the Golden Lion in 2019 and rewrote the history of comic book movies. Todd Phillips returns to Venice, reaffirming his vision, which becomes even darker and more desperate, despite the musical approach.
by Mattia Carzaniga
“The music.” These are the first words spoken by Arthur Fleck/Joaquin Phoenix in Joker: Folie à Deux, perhaps the most anticipated film of the fall, certainly the most anticipated at this year’s Venice Film Festival. Even for reasons tied to Venice’s history. What was merely a legend five years ago was confirmed by director Barbera: the first film was originally scheduled out of competition, but due to a mistake in the response letter to the production, it was invited into the competition. You know how it turned out: Golden Lion, over a billion dollars at the global box office, and a shift in direction for the festival itself. Even comic book films, albeit with a very different vision from the Marvel multiverses, can win the top prize at one of the world’s major festivals.
The sequel, which wasn’t a certainty despite the box office success, was highly anticipated, and everyone expected another change of course, a new approach. “The music,” as I mentioned. We’ve known for some time that Joker 2 is, at least in part, a musical, though with a very different vision from the genre’s classics. But there are many songs, perfectly staged numbers, even tap dancing. There’s Lady Gaga. But the music had to change, inevitably.
“Let’s give them what they want,” says Lady Gaga in a musical sequence, playing a Harley Quinn who deconstructs the mythology of her character. In this sense, Folie à Deux does not disappoint fans’ expectations. There’s still a monumental Phoenix, perhaps even more so. And more thematic and directorial experimentation, in a field that usually allows very little. This time, at the heart of director Todd Phillips’ cinephilia, there’s another journey that will satisfy film enthusiasts like him: if the first was an homage to the tail end of New American Cinema, to Scorsese‘s Mean Streets and The King of Comedy in particular, this one now takes a Technicolor turn toward the great tradition of Old Hollywood, now leaping into the 1960s and 1970s of Sonny & Cher and company (literally).
But there’s a further shift. The darkness of the first film, which rewrote the paradigm of the comic book supervillain in an intimate, despairing, and even political key, is even more severe here. The critique already at the core of Joker 1 is even harsher. There’s no room for hope (and the ending, in some ways unprecedented for a film of this genre, confirms this). Folie à Deux is a snapshot of the collapse of every system: legal, penal, health. It’s also a critique of the social media debate that endlessly and convulsively discusses mental health but often forgets reality once Instagram profiles are closed.
Of course, Joker 2, like its predecessor, does not aim to be a political manifesto. That’s Entertainment is the central theme, among the many standards sung almost live by Phoenix and Gaga. And Phillips is someone who seeks entertainment, even in a film that, as someone commented after the first press screening at the Lido, seems to do everything possible to sabotage itself on the crowd-pleasing, pop front, almost making amends for all the earnings in 2019, after that perhaps unintentionally generated cult following. And so, all or nearly all genres of pure cinematic entertainment are lined up. The musical, as I mentioned. But also the legal thriller, the romance, the prison movie, the pure and simple drama. And the comedy, though it’s always a nasty snicker, right up to what I (didn’t) mention.
Even a festival like the Venice Film Festival is entertainment, and on the red carpet, Lady Gaga—very good in the film in a role more sung than acted—did what was expected of her, or even more. She arrived on foot—severely black dress, horned headpiece, and lace: not the joyful pink feathers of A Star Is Born—turning that parade almost into a church entrance. Joker has become, over the years, a religion with its own followers, who yesterday outside the Cinema Palace, some even dressed up as Arthur or Harley, waited for Phillips, Phoenix, and the new girl of the bunch in almost sacred silence.
The superfans at the Lido are already divided: some were a bit disappointed, some say they need to see it again because one viewing wasn’t enough, it was a disorienting experience. “Let’s give the audience what they want”: but maybe not. And for this reason, Joker—and its sequel—remains a unique case in today’s blockbuster landscape.
Rolling Stone Italia, September 5, 2024
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Presented in competition at the 2024 Venice Film Festival, Joker: Folie à Deux by Todd Phillips is an inevitable sequel, as much anticipated as it is mocked. It serves as a litmus test for an unexpected directorial ambition that now struggles to coexist with the strict demands of the star system, fandom, box office, and perhaps even the critics. Just a few years after Joker, a stand-alone film that didn’t seem to need a follow-up, the real winners (both on and off the screen) are the public, social media banter, and the insatiable desire to elevate living legends only to tear them down again.
by Enrico Azzano
There’s a light, a certain kind of light
Joker: Folie à Deux begins with Arthur Fleck confined in Arkham, awaiting trial for his crimes as the Joker. Struggling with his dual identity, Arthur not only encounters true love but also discovers the music that has always lived within him…
There’s a light
A certain kind of light
That never shone on me
I want my life to be lived with you
Lived with you..
– To Love Somebody.
Almost compelled to ride the unexpected success of Joker, Todd Phillips abandons the calm, Scorsese-inspired tones of the first film and ventures into a highly risky sequel, armed with the bold idea of incorporating a musical twist and featuring the transformative Lady Gaga—who, while excellent, feels somewhat underutilized as Harley Quinn. Joaquin Phoenix once again fully inhabits his now iconic role, and Gaga brings plenty of charm. Some sequences undeniably work (such as the studio scene set to To Love Somebody), and there’s no lack of narrative potential. However, Joker: Folie à Deux ultimately falls flat, weighed down by an overly long and redundant trial sequence that rehashes characters and themes from the first film, revealing a growing sense of stagnation. Instead of a bold new direction, the film feels like two steps backward.
Revisiting the well-trodden path of Arthur Fleck/Joker’s mental mechanisms (already established as more symbol than character), Phillips and co-writer Scott Silver steer the narrative toward different goals. Beyond the integration of musical elements, the film shifts away from the socio-political backdrop that made Joker resonate in 2019, where it tapped into a growing anger that foreshadowed the 2021 Capitol riot. In contrast, Joker: Folie à Deux reduces this to something more trivial, less politically charged, and certainly less risky in the Hollywood landscape. In short, the film’s script is a rewriting that normalizes what came before. Arthur Fleck’s popular trajectory had already reached its conclusion in 2019, as Phillips himself confirmed when the film won the Golden Lion: “The film was never designed for a sequel. We always presented it as a one-off, and that’s it.” Amen.
Despite good intentions being cast aside and the safety net of Scorsese’s influence removed, Joker: Folie à Deux can’t compensate for its shortcomings with the musical format, which quickly proves too thin to cover the film’s weaknesses. At its core, this sequel is largely a variation on the original—a self-remake, like many sequels, only this time with singing and dancing. The extensive courtroom sequence detracts from the “daring” transformation, leaving the film with little room to breathe. Even a fleeting appearance by a dim Harvey Dent fails to sustain the narrative’s ambiguous complexity, and Brendan Gleeson’s character doesn’t bring enough depth to the claustrophobic, sickly prison setting.
The attempt to break free from mainstream cinema conventions, at the height of comic book movies’ popularity, hinges on its use of modern icons like Lady Gaga, who was expected to elevate both the music and the film. And to some extent, she does. However, the balance between caution and boldness remains disappointingly close to the safety net of DC’s ambitions for a “Black Label” approach. Even the animated prologue, not one of Sylvain Chomet’s best works, serves as a double statement of intent, both narratively and in production terms. The internal conflict between Arthur Fleck and his shadow echoes the friction between creative ambition and the relentless push for box office success. In the end, it represents the final betrayal of Joker’s stand-alone concept. Like Fleck, Phillips too may eventually have to confront his inner voice, the fans (or fanatics), and perhaps even the corridors of Hollywood itself.
Quinlan, September 5, 2024
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Joker: Folie à Deux Review: The Sequel is a Failed Film
The Joker sequel collapses under its own revolutionary ambition, exposing its conservative core and producing a musical that isn’t really a musical.
by Paolo Falletta
When the craziest clown of all time makes his first appearance in a slapstick animation segment, a bit Looney Tunes and a bit Tom & Jerry, one starts to believe Todd Phillips really has something wild in store for Joker: Folie à Deux. Much has been said about it, and everything seemed to foreshadow it: it was already crazy to consider making a sequel to the definitive film about DC’s clown (check out our review of Joker), crazy to turn it into a musical, and even more intriguing was the involvement of Lady Gaga as Harley Quinn, stepping into the shadow of Margot Robbie’s iconic portrayal (see our review of Birds of Prey). Unfortunately, Joker: Folie à Deux is a flawed film in almost every aspect.
Joker: Folie à Deux is a Quasi-Musical
Trying to add something new after the alchemical mix of the first movie, which became an instant cult classic with its striking images and unforgettable sounds, was an uphill battle from the start. Perhaps, despite some hesitations, the only sensible path was to push the boundaries of a film so rigidly structured by its perfect combination and status, to avoid a pale repetition of the original.
Let’s not beat around the bush: Joker: Folie à Deux is not a musical. Sure, there are plenty of musical moments, with Joker and Harley Quinn dueting to To Love Somebody by the Bee Gees and emulating Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse with That’s Entertainment, but there’s no real trace of a musical. To clarify: these choreographed musical sequences happen inside Joker’s mind, ultimately turning into detachable episodes, clips that can be decontextualized and replayed because they’re self-contained and narratively irrelevant.
The real performances, however, are nothing more than moments where the two lovers sing and dance, fully aware of what they’re doing (Joker’s “stop singing” is almost an act of renunciation, a desire to break an already shaky spell), while the other characters merely watch, never participating in their euphoric delirium. In short, it’s not a musical in the traditional sense, with expressive coherence, but rather two characters playing at being in a musical.
It’s a half-hearted revolution, and that can’t work. If the only way to reclaim a voice in the face of the imposing shadow of the first film was to shake things up and rebel against its rigid structure, experimenting with the madness hinted at in the title and amplifying the musical element from the 2019 Joker, a conservative approach simply couldn’t succeed.
The shift needed to be radical, as it was teased and touted as something fresh and different. The problem isn’t unmet expectations but a broken promise, a declaration of intent that ends up feeling like a distortion. Still, there’s some joy in hearing Lady Gaga cover (They Long to Be) Close to You by The Carpenters, seeing her dance alongside a Joaquin Phoenix reprising his chaotic, stylish moves, and watching the two lovers in new roles, even if confined to secondary sequences.
Retracing Steps
But beyond the conceptual retreat—which may not be a tragedy for musical skeptics—Joker: Folie à Deux can’t shake off a certain sense of redundancy.
Caught between legal drama and psychological thriller, with trials that morph into therapy sessions and a love story that serves merely as a pretext, the new Joker often feels like a film that comments on its predecessor. Above all, it’s deeply misguided to revert Arthur Fleck to his pre-epiphany state (despite the justification of medication), forcing him to retrace his steps and return to the meekness that his transformation into Joker had already crushed. This relapse feels like a pale reflection of the exhilarating, cathartic liberation from the first film.
It’s also pointless to trap Joker in a space where he’s given no room to maneuver, relegated to a judicial process with no real chance of a favorable outcome, robbing the audience of any tension. It feels like we’re watching a redundant segment that could have been skipped entirely, as the film could have begun with its ending, revisiting the events of the first movie (and in doing so, draining them of their impact), while attempting a deeper dive into Arthur Fleck’s idiosyncrasies, but failing to recapture the audience’s sympathy.
The Fall of Idols
Harley Quinn, on the other hand, is more of a catalyst, rekindling Joker’s dormant euphoria, acting as a vessel and reflection of the fanatical idolization of the masses rather than a fully developed character. Like a modern-day Misa Amane, her characterization is lacking (but given her role, this is perhaps justifiable, even necessary). Harley is a vehicle for reflecting on the distorting power of spectacle, which presents ideas instead of individuals—flattened, iconic figures devoid of complexity, turned into banners and ideological personifications.
Here, Joker: Folie à Deux does seem to have something to say, finding thematic continuity with the first film in its portrayal of reality distorted by mass media and the downfall of idols leading to violent outbursts. This is where the film should have leaned in to find its own voice, continuing the conversation started by Joker and forming a cohesive ideological sequel. It partly succeeds by exposing the vicious cycle of the masses that deify only to tear down, raising up giants before demolishing them. But Joker: Folie à Deux stops just when it should start, collapsing under its own weight, producing the sound of a towering cinematic body crashing down.
Il sequel di Joker rinnega sé stesso e il proprio impeto rivoluzionario, dando vita a un ibrido che è quasi-musical, quasi-legal drama e quasi-storia d’amore, che ritratta sulla sua dichiarazione d’intenti e finisce per soccombere al proprio carattere pleonastico e alla propria inclinazione conservativa. Todd Phillips torna a saggiare il tema interessante del potere deformante dei mass media e della violenza prodotta dalla disillusione, riflette sugli idoli e sul tonfo della loro caduta, ma fa un film sbagliato nella forma e nelle intenzioni, che è rivoluzione a metà, e non può esistere.
Everyeye Cinema, September 6, 2024
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by Federico Pedroni
Arthur Fleck is locked away in Arkham Asylum. No more Joker smiles, although the prison guards, in what feels like an obsession disguised as a joke, keep asking him for a joke, perhaps to exorcise or erase his distant threat. Fleck may have abdicated his role: increasingly emaciated, increasingly gaunt, he no longer thinks about the crimes he committed, drained by his present-day mistreatment. Where is Joker, the mask worn by Fleck, the killer who once stirred the masses to revolt, reminiscent of Capitol Hill? Fleck is a shadow, dragged reluctantly through the filthy prison corridors, led—almost as if to play out some cruel joke—to a remedial singing lesson where he encounters his double.
Joker: Folie à Deux revives the protagonist of the original film, embracing the idea of an impossible sequel. If the original Joker aimed to rewrite the rules of superhero films by diving into the gritty realism of 1970s American cinema—blending the DC comics imagery with the aesthetics of Scorsese’s Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy in a lauded but laboratory-like operation—this sequel treads even more radical, uncharted paths. Disorientation remains the primary rule: Joker bent the superhero genre to fit the aesthetic of once-avant-garde cinema; Joker: Folie à Deux mixes disparate genres in an attempt to distill an impossible derivative.
Joker—perhaps overrated in its flood of awards and acclaim—proposed a different route for the comic-book movie, carrying with it the implicit idea that it could not be replicated. Ontologically, Joker did not anticipate sequels, presenting itself as a standalone work. By agreeing—perhaps bending?—to the established rules of Hollywood blockbusters, Todd Phillips chooses to craft a sequel that reshuffles the deck, verging on a sleight of hand. In making an unthinkable sequel, Phillips daringly shuffles the cards.
Joker: Folie à Deux is, in fact, a deviation, a parallel thrill, almost a negation of the original model. It’s as if its derivative nature has morphed into an increasingly elusive performance anxiety. How to reignite the morbid vitality of Fleck/Joker (to whom Phoenix lends his increasingly iconic eccentricity), his dangerous rebellious instincts, his symbolic power? Locked within the confines of Arkham, his communicative power has become marginal, and he himself has been extinguished. A simple visual connection—eye contact, always pivotal in mainstream sentimentality—with a creature cut from the same cloth rekindles the madness, and thus the game begins. In an unlikely singing class, cramped within the prison corridors, Fleck catches a glimpse of Lee/Harley Quinn (a Lady Gaga who dominates the screen in every single shot), in whom he finds, in a sort of psychotic kaleidoscope, a reflection of his own double. Each of them hides a past to be erased, each possesses a personality—albeit dual—that seeks expression. Phillips no longer limits himself to reframing the superhero movie—albeit through a “villain” lens—via (falsely?) provocative canons.
In the first Joker, the appeal—though overly calculated—lay in a clever reenactment of the noir imagery of a recognizable, ever-stylish American cinema. In this sketch of a sequel—more imperfect but bolder than the original—Phillips ups the ante at the risk of self-sabotage. He constructs a mirror for Phoenix’s character (more Fleck than Joker now), building yet another reflective counterpart. Lady Gaga offers a skewed version of Harley Quinn, one we never quite imagined: a distortion of a distortion, perhaps another product of the protagonist’s psychotic spiral. Phillips applies the same treatment to the narrative structure: Joker: Folie à Deux is a comic-book film (elevated by an intro, also faux-immersive, styled like a 1950s cartoon by Sylvain Chomet) that morphs into a prison movie, which then shifts into a procedural (disorienting the audience, bending it, even boring it). Finally, it dons yet another mask—a derivative one this time—and becomes a musical. A musical that gazes backward (to Burt Bacharach, to Fred Astaire in The Band Wagon by Vincente Minnelli) to reflect upon its own imagery.
In short, Joker: Folie à Deux is the chronicle of an inevitable failure, the hypothesis of an impossible sequel to a global success, a bold act destined for mockery but containing a wild goal in its tender intangibility: to reflect on how and why the mere repetition of the same concepts can (and must?) be questioned in an era where blockbusters are seen only in their role as technically reproducible commodities. And this, regardless of the film’s merits or faults, of Phillips’ (perhaps even presumptuous) overreach, and of the first Joker‘s case study, remains a question that cannot be easily evaded—just like Arkham’s prison.
Cineforum, September 6, 2024
