Joker: Folie A Deux (15)

Arthur Fleck has been institutionalised at Arkham State Hospital, where he awaits trial for his crimes as Joker by newly elected district attorney Harvey Dent. Arthur wrestles with his dual identity and encounters fellow patient Harleen "Lee" Quinzel in a music therapy class. She nurtures a dangerous obsession with Arthur and they exorcise demons through the power of song under the watchful eye of hospital guard Jackie Sullivan.

LondonNet Film Review

Joker: Folie A Deux (15) Film Review from LondonNet

Five years after Todd Phillips’ Joker, the director and his Oscar-winning lead return to pick up Arthur Fleck’s story. Phoenix appears as a subdued Fleck in the dreary Arkham, hounded by the guards – including one played brilliantly by Brendan Gleeson – as he is fed medication and dumped in a barebones cell. He is awaiting trial for the murders he, or his alter-ego Joker, as his defence lawyer argues, committed, and his lawyer’s plan is to plead insanity, claiming he has a split personality to avoid the death penalty…

When Fleck meets Quinn at a prison singing club, she’s immediately drawn to him and his infamy. They form an instant connection which soon evolves into a folie a deux, a shared delusion that their lives are a musical, breaking intermittently into song and dance numbers. Gaga, as impossibly talented as she is, convincingly tones down her vocal skill to portray an amateur singer in a psychiatric hospital, while Phoenix adds more flair as the film goes on, including in a tapdance number which is genuinely impressive. The musical element to Joker: Folie A Deux adds a fun layer and allows a unique exploration of Arthur and Lee’s mental states, but it is also something of a distraction from the fact that, really, there’s not much going on in the plot.

There are only two main locations in the film, Arkham and the courthouse, and while the set design for the hospital/prison and the drama in court are both notable, the musical interludes, diverting as they may be, artificially extend the film’s run time to a too-long two hours and 19 minutes. There is barely any of the dark and grizzly violence or heart-pumping action scenes that fans of the Joker/Batman franchise as a whole love and expect, instead presenting a procedural drama that could have done with a bit more blood, gore and panache. It is disappointing that Gaga’s Lee was not given more character development or independent growth; she is certainly got the acting chops, and perhaps this would have given the plot some much-needed direction.

By the end, I did not feel like I understood Arthur Fleck and Joker any more than I already did from the 2019 film, and while I enjoyed letting the performances and production wash over me, I’m not sure Folie A Deux said anything more than Joker already has.

– Rachael Davis