JOKER : FOLIE A DEUX - Tuesday 8th October 2024

I saw the MA15+ Rated 'JOKER : FOLIE A DEUX' earlier this week, and this American musical psychological thriller film is Co-Written, Co-Produced and Directed by Todd Phillips and is the sequel to 2019's 'Joker' - also Directed by Todd Phillips which grossed US$1.08B off the back of a production budget of about US$65M. Loosely based on DC Comics characters, 'Joker' received numerous accolades, including two Academy Award wins at the 92nd Academy Awards for Best Actor (Phoenix) and Best Original Score out of eleven nominations including Best Picture, becoming the first DC film to do so. This film Premiered at this years recent Venice International Film Festival where it was in official competition, and was released in the US last week too. Coming in at a US$200M budget cost, it has divided critics, much like 'Joker' before it, has generated mixed or average reviews, and has so far grossed US$121M.

Set sometime in the early '80's and two years after the events of the first film, Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix), is now a patient at Arkham State Hospital in Gotham City, and is awaiting trial for the five murders he committed back then. His lawyer, Maryanne Stewart (Catherine Keener), has in mind to argue in his defence that Arthur has dissociative identity disorder and that his 'Joker' personality was responsible for the crimes. Meanwhile, head security guard at the hospital Jackie Sullivan (Brendan Gleeson) often shares a joke with Arthur and one day takes him over to the other side of the hospital where less dangerous patients are housed, to join a music therapy session, for his recent good behaviour. While there, his attention is drawn to Harleen 'Lee' Quinzel (Lady Gaga), who is part of the group of singers. The pair strike up a private conversation while Jackie's attention is elsewhere, and Lee tells Arthur that she grew up in the same neighbourhood as he did, had an abusive father who died in a car crash, and was committed by her mother to the hospital after burning down her parents' apartment building. Lee also expresses her admiration for the Joker's crimes and personality, and saying that she watched a TV movie about Arthur/Joker twenty times and that is was great.

One evening during a screening of a film, Lee starts a fire by igniting a box of matches and dropping it into a piano. The flames very quickly take hold and all the patients and staff evacuate outside. Lee and Arthur are caught trying to escape, and Arthur is placed in solitary confinement for two weeks. 

Lee visits him at night to say she is being released because he is such a bad influence on her, but she promises to attend his trial, and they have sex. During an interview with television personality Paddy Meyers (Steve Coogan), Arthur sings to Lee through the television screen, only serving to deepen her love for him. On the day of the trial, Assistant District Attorney Harvey Dent (Harry Lawtey) calls witnesses who dismiss Arthur's claims of insanity. During a break, Maryanne reveals to Arthur that Lee was actually a psychiatry student who grew up in the Upper West Side, and her father, a doctor, is alive, and that she comes from a reasonably well off family. Additionally, she voluntarily committed herself at Arkham, checked herself out, and never burned down an apartment building. 

When Arthur confronts Lee with these new found details, she confesses that everyone lies, and her lies were an effort to get close to Arthur. She also announces to him that she is pregnant and has moved into his old apartment building to create a home for them both for when he is freed.

The next day at the trial, Arthur openly dismisses Maryanne and makes it known that he wishes to represent himself. After bringing Arthur's former clown co-worker Gary Puddles (Leigh Gill) and former neighbour with whom he had an imagined relationship Sophie Dumond (Zazie Beetz) to the stand, Dent rests his case. Arthur, visibly affected by Puddles testimony, offers no defence, although, during his speech, he mentions the Arkham guards in a negative light, by calling them stupid and fat.

Upon returning to Arkham, he is taken to the shower room by head guard Jackie Sullivan and two other guards, where he is brutally beaten before being dragged back to his cell partially naked. Ricky (Jacob Lofland), an inmate and friend of Arthur, verbally confronts the guards, resulting in Jackie strangling him to death. Arthur overhears this from his nearby cell.

During his closing address in court the next day in which Arthur is fully made up as Joker, a devastated Arthur renounces his Joker persona, taking full responsibility for his actions, and stating that he in fact killed six people - his mother was the last one whose face he smothered with a pillow suffocating her. Upon hearing this devastating news Lee storms out of the courtroom, and the jury finds Arthur guilty of first-degree murder. As the foreman reads the verdict, a car bomb explodes immediately outside the courthouse, killing and injuring numerous attendees and scarring half of Dent's face. In the ensuing chaos, two followers also dressed in full Joker garb, help Arthur escape by bundling him into a car.

Arthur jumps from the car and runs through the streets of Gotham eventually encountering Lee outside his old apartment, but she rejects him for renouncing his Joker persona, tells him that she's not pregnant and bids him goodbye as she walks away. The Police arrive, apprehend Arthur and return him to Arkham. The next day, a young patient approaches Arthur and begins to tell him a joke with the punchline being that he repeatedly stabs Arthur in the stomach. As Arthur bleeds out and soon dies from his wounds, the patient takes the knife he just used on Arthur and carves a smile on his face while laughing maniacally.

'Joker : Folie a Deux' was originally intended as a stand alone film and not the sequel we see here. Perhaps had that been the case critic and audience reviews would have been a whole lot more favourable. That said, for me this film also failed to live up to expectations after the mega success of its 2019 predecessor. While the performances of Phoenix and Gaga are on point (although Gaga is a little under utilised here), the plot meanders along without getting very far at all, and the film struggles to decide if it is a musical, a drama, a comedy, a psychological thriller or a super-villain offering. The production values are nonetheless very good, and while the musical interludes are more often that not a continuation of the scene in which they are set, they are at times over bearing and over used. Save yourself the price of your cinema entry and wait for it to arrive on your preferred streaming service. 

'Joker : Folie a Deux' merits two claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard from a possible five claps.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-