THE MORNING LIST
This week in theaters, Todd Phillips creates love at first sight between Joachim Phoenix and Lady Gaga in the second part of the Joker’s adventures; Indian filmmaker Payal Kapadia paints a mixed portrait of a city of lights, Bombay, through the daily lives of three women; and François Ozon drags old age in the shadow of the thriller.
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“Joker: Folie à Deux”: The romance of the assassins
The launch of the first Joker, in 2019 – portrait of a person with sociopathic skin that evokes The man who laughs (1869), by Victor Hugo – had demonstrated with some brilliance that the encephalogram of superhero films was not systematically flat. The success of this invigorating, dark experience earned Warner more than a billion dollars. It is rare that such a martingale goes unanswered in Hollywood, where, despite being poets, the producers remain businessmen. This is how director Todd Phillips returns to the controls, tripling the film’s budget for three times less action than the previous one.
Joker: madness for two is a locked-in studio musical where bipolar proletarian Arthur Fleck, aka the Joker (Joaquin Phoenix), and his new love interest, erotomaniac Lee Quinzel, aka Harley Quinn (Lady Gaga), spend most of their time promoting the song. Let us reassure the purists: the film is still uncomfortable, very well made, and truly terrifying, but in the strangest and most devious way possible. Divided between the prison asylum where the fake abortion Arthur is serving his sentence for six murders and the trial that will undoubtedly send him ad patres, the film organizes his meeting with Lee Quinzel, an absolute fan fascinated by the bad boy clown and his passion for the world of show. Immediate love at first sight, dreamlike escapades where the couple reinterprets in a duet some treasures of American popular song, the film describes the scandal of an American dream shared by its own psychopaths. J.Ma.
American film by Todd Phillips. With Joaquin Phoenix, Lady Gaga, Brendan Gleeson, Catherine Keener (2:19).
“Everything we imagine as light”: three women in Bombay
On board a train arriving in Bombay, a woman in a blue sari stands, holding onto the bar as if she were spinning on a carousel. We find her at the hospital where she works as a nurse. Her name is Prabha (Kani Kusruti), she lives in a room with Anu (Divya Prabha), who we find a few floors below, in the ticket office, spinning around in her chair to avoid getting bored. The stethoscope is your love horoscope: the nurse on duty uses it to listen to your heartbeat. When will Anu find Shiaz, her Muslim lover whom her parents will never accept? The third protagonist, Parvaty (Chhaya Kadam), is the cook of the same hospital. The old building he lives in is threatened with destruction.
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