THE OPINION OF THE “WORLD” – SHOULD NOT BE LOST
The launch of the first Jokerin 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.
Thus, the unique return of the Venetian competition of this “folie à deux” that visibly divided opinions, is set to baffle the most die-hard fans and is not far from delighting us. How can you also trust in the long term a zany comedy writer like Todd Phillips, who can put a tiger in a Las Vegas kitchen and a drunk Chinese man in the trunk of your car (Very bad trip2009) or to start this new Joker For a strange animated sequence entrusted to the Frenchman Sylvain Chomet? Joker: madness for two – let us reassure the purists – it is still an uncomfortable, very well made and very scary film, but in the strangest and most devious way possible.
Hyped, fake, probably neuroleptic to the core, Arthur Fleck serves his sentence in the sinister Arkham Asylum, saddened by guards who give him monstrosity points (Brendan Gleeson, a colossal scumbag). You have to imagine the actor having fun in the pure expression of this lack and this confinement, without a line of dialogue. Carefully locked in the limbo of his dreams of greatness and revenge, where he appears as the protagonist of the scene, the dwarf and five-time murderer waits, in silence, for his moment, with an imperceptible hint of a smile that makes us fear the worst. He finds it, this time, at a glance, as the guard takes him past a room where a music workshop reserved for prisoners is taking place.
A girl with a sickly complexion, dirty blonde hair and magnetic eyes fixes her gaze on his and, pretending to have a gun pointed at his head, hooks him, pierces him, conquers him. He longs to see her again. She has just, she says, burned down his parents’ building, nothing could be more normal, and she is going, it is written on her lips, to eat him alive, unless he dismantles her first. It is, of course, the formidable Harley Quinn, whose star Lady Gaga, the decisive casting choice, offers here an impulsive version, bordering on the clingy, very distant, and much more striking, than Margot Robbie’s spicy and petulant version. . in birds of prey (2020), by Cathy Yan.
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