“Joker: Folie à Deux feels like a film for nobody: review”.

A film can be a big downer and still have no emotional significance. That is the sad, bent truth Joker: Folie à Deux, Todd Phillips' sequel to his hugely popular 2019 vigilante extravaganza joker. The image has so little energy that it falls off the screen – it's as saggy as the sad psychiatric prison underpants worn by its depressed, malnourished hero Arthur Fleck, played again by Joaquin Phoenix. (For his portrayal of this character, he won the Oscar for Most Actress for the first time.) Slide for two is somewhat violent, with a few off-camera punches and a fantasy shootout or two, but it doesn't come close to matching the deadpan, shocking “look how empty our world is today” nihilism of the earlier film. Phillips and his co-writer Scott Silver have attempted something daring here, delivering a dark film that in no way tries to outdo its predecessor. But intentions are not the same as full-fledged works, and Slide for two stumbles on almost all fronts. Even if the film's ambitions are admirable, you might end up too bored to care.

This time, Phoenix's Arthur Fleck, the troubled murderer who suffers from a vaguely defined split personality, is now locked up in the maximum security wing of Arkham State Hospital as he awaits trial for the five murders – making six – he committed in the earlier film . Arthur is slumped over, sad and alarmingly emaciated, and dutifully takes his daily medication. This keeps him on the right path, making him a particularly vulnerable target for the hospital's sadistic guards. (They're led by Brendan Gleeson, who grins like a cartoon.) The good news is that Arthur has a friendly, personable lawyer: Catherine Keener's Maryanne Stewart. And he may even have a chance to find love: While being escorted on a rare excursion through the hospital's minimum-security ward, where the less insane are housed, he notices a dispirited-looking patient in a sagging cardigan. Lee Quinzel (Lady Gaga) immediately recognizes Arthur, not only from news reports of his murderous exploits as his alter ego Joker, but also from a television movie made about him. It is difficult and also awakens hope in him. Later, back in his own dreary hospital ward, he warbles the lyrics to “For Once in My Life” as the guards chuckle heartlessly.

The focus here is on Arthur's vulnerability, and at first Lee – who later became a version of the character known as Harley Quinn in the Batman story – seems genuinely drawn to his sweet, if broken, naivety. Lee was convicted of setting fire to her parents' home. Now she sets Arthur's heart on fire. They meet again when Arthur is invited to the minimum security station's common room to watch Stanley Donen's 1953 classic The band wagon with the other inmates. (It's just one of trillions of movie references The Umbrellas of Cherbourg to Looney Tunes too psycho, (They're crammed into the film like colored pegs in a Lite-Brite board.) But Lee becomes restless during the screening; she wants to cause mischief. Arthur objects, not wanting to leave before the movie arrives with the big “That's Entertainment!” Number. This is the moment when he, like us, should know that Lee is all wrong for him: under no circumstances do you stop watching The band wagon halfway.

But Lee prevails. After she causes a ruckus by setting fire to the piano in the common room, the two escape the hospital to enjoy a brief moment of freedom before being brought back. At this point, Arthur is addicted. He dreams of Lee and invents colorful song and dance scenarios in which the two cavort manically – although in these dreams he is always the Joker, never Arthur. There's a 1970s vaudeville-style number in which they duet with the Bee Gees' “To Love Somebody”; in another, Arthur-as-Joker performs a crazy tap dance number. Slide for two is a certified musical, even if Phillips tried to move away from that genre distinction in the years leading up to its release. He probably has some sense of how many people who hate musicals are out there, especially among those who prefer comic book adaptations, and he doesn't want to risk upsetting them.

He needn't have worried. The musical numbers in Slide for two— particularly the candy-colored fantasy sequences — are the liveliest thing about it, even if they're not enough to break the film out of its morose lockstep. The film largely takes place in dreary Arkham and a stately courtroom. There's a lot of Arthur and very little Joker. Because Phillips feels the need to remind us that the world doesn't love Arthur Fleck; It loves the crazy, murderous comedian who is in Joker, took on a snarky talk show host on live television. And it turns out that this is also Lee's preferred version of Arthur. While in the first film Arthur was the shy, strange loser who was rejected by all women, now he's being screwed over by one. It's the ultimate fulfillment of an incel's view of women: They are the enemy, pure and simple.

Phillips ultimately takes the film to a sad, dark place that probably won't please or even move anyone. The end of Joker: Folie à Deux was enough to make me a little sad for fans of the earlier film, which I detested. The Was this what they had been looking forward to for the past few years? As you would expect, Lady Gaga comes to life during the musical numbers. Most of the time, though, it's strangely muted. When asked about her adoration for the sick, sad Arthur, Lee, eyes crazy like a kitten's clock, replies, “He's not sick, he's perfect.” Phillips and Silver have one of our most compelling actors at their fingertips, and that's the best dialogue, that you can imagine?

At least Phoenix has a little more to offer. With his sunken eye sockets and square jaw, he looks like a cross between Rod Serling, a young Johnny Cash and a clean-shaven Abraham Lincoln. Phoenix has actually played one of these characters before, in James Mangold's 2005 biography Cash Walk the line; It's one of his best performances. He is a wonderfully sensitive actor who is never afraid to go off in a strange direction. Mike Mills Come on, come on, Jacques Audiards The sisters brothers, Lynne Ramsays You were never really here, Gus van Sant's Don't worry, he won't get far on foot, a series of fruitful collaborations with James Gray, including the cross-cultural love story Two lovers: Phoenix has given exceptional performances in a number of different films, some of which have been completely underrated. Even with Ridley Scott it's absolutely ridiculous Napoleon, He makes a pretty good part fact, part fantasy Bonaparte, a brilliant military strategist who becomes a mumbling idiot around his lover Josephine.

As in the previous film, Phoenix lost about 50 pounds for the role of Arthur. More than once we see him shirtless, his shoulder blades sticking out like deformed epaulettes. It seems less like commitment and more like overkill. (Phoenix has admitted that the weight loss was harder on his body this time, in part because of the demanding dance rehearsals. He has also wryly admitted that such rapid weight loss is not something he should do anymore as he gets closer to 50. ) As Arthur, Phoenix is ​​suitably pathetic; As a joker, he emerges predictably. There's nothing fresh or compelling about anything Phoenix brings to the film, but it hardly seems to be his fault. If you enjoyed the depraved antics of Arthur-as-Joker, even in a perverse way Joker, The portions can be found in Slide for two poorer and far less satisfying. With Folie à Deux, Phillips gives fans a letdown that essentially punishes them for enjoying the fleeting energy of the first film. It's more of a corrective than a sequel, a “Go Direct to Jail” card in movie form.