Joker: Folie à Deux: Movie Review

Cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Lady Gaga, Brendan Gleeson, Catherine Keener, Harry Lawley

Director: Todd Phillips

Todd Phillips' return to the world of Joker is both a frustrating and stimulatingly disturbing experience.

Two years after Phoenix's Arthur Fleck went on a murder spree that culminated in an on-screen killing, he's still in Arkham State Hospital awaiting evaluation for trial.

Medicated and muted, Fleck's picked on and prodded by the institute's guards (chiefly Brendan Gleeson), his world is ignited when he meets Lady Gaga's Lee, a fellow inmate. Falling for her and imagining his life with her after he's finally committed to trial.

There's scant little plot in Joker: Folie à Deux, a film that's definitively a musical, less a superhero outing, and more a distorted take on a psyche splintering under its own weight. 

Drawn out over 2 and a quarter hours, Phillips is less interested in a manic Joker that's swirled up a world of support outside the bars, becoming a lightning rod for societal unease within Gotham. It plays well to the idea that Fleck's no criminal genius, more a nihilistic loser who's borderline dangerous for selfish reasons.

But with a strong premise, what pulls Joker: Folie à Deux aside is its reliance on music to tell the story, with Phoenix and Gaga breaking into song to unveil their emotions and while both fare well and have obvious pedigree in the genre, the constant reliance on this narrative trick drags the film's pace when it doesn't need to.

There's a dour tone penetrating Joker: Folie à Deux - and while that's no bad thing in parts, over the film's run time, it becomes stifling and claustrophobic. By centring solely on these two, Phillips confines the lense to their intense bond, but that leaves the rest of the movie lacking much else.

Essentially a drawn-out courtroom drama, Joker: Folie à Deux is an intriguing take on the mania of Fleck's condition, and Phoenix remains as mesmerising as before. There's a distinct impression the film could have been more daring, and is lacking an ignited powderkeg moment.

It's no laughing matter throughout, and while some may find it triggering and unsettling, others will conversely declare this return to Joker's world boring and dull.