Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.That’s entertainment. They build you up and then they knock you down. So it is in Joker: Folie à Deux, in which failed clown/comic Arthur Fleck is denied the joys of infamy and made to suffer the consequences of his exploits. To put it another way, as Sinatra sang over the closing frames of the first Joker, “That’s Life”. For Fleck that means life imprisonment — or possibly the death penalty — as he awaits trial in a maximum-security Gotham prison. He is medicated and subdued, that mirthless laugh nowhere to be heard. “Lost your sense of humour?” inquires burly prison guard Brendan Gleeson with spiteful glee.Returning to the Venice Film Festival five years after launching his 2019 film to $1bn global success, co-writer/director Todd Phillips denies himself a self-satisfied encore. What he delivers instead is an introspective corrective of sorts to Joker, which was accused by some of glorifying its anti-hero and creating an incel celebrity. It would be hard to make that claim this time around. For one thing, Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) now gets a girlfriend in the shape of Harley Quinn (Lady Gaga), the two bonding over a shared love of music and matricide.“Just be yourself,” advises kindly defence attorney (Catherine Keener) as Fleck prepares to face the public, her case resting on a diagnosis of multiple-personality disorder. As in Joker, he is both perpetrator and victim, but where that film pointed the finger at welfare cuts, the second pivots to the media, which have feasted on his crimes. Books have been written, a hit TV movie made. When a camera crew arrives to interview him, Fleck turns accuser. “Do you really care?” he rages at the man asking the glib questions (Steve Coogan playing a supercilious American analogue of Alan Partridge).So with homicidal mayhem taking a back seat, what replaces it? The answer is a romance of sorts, and a whole lot of singing. There is so much warbling here that Joker could reasonably be rechristened Crooner. Perhaps this is what comes from casting Gaga as his lovestruck enabler. When the two aren’t plotting a homicidal honeymoon, they are duetting through the great American songbook, sometimes accompanied by fantasy sequences conjuring classic MGM. These musical numbers drain the drama of intensity, the edginess of the first film in scarce supply in this sedated second. But this Joker still has a trick up its sleeve — even a serious subtext. The best moment comes late on in an incendiary scene that sparks January-6-like mayhem, Phoenix outstanding again as he goes from dead-eyed despair to criminally magnetic charisma. It’s tempting to discern a political undertone in this depiction of a narcissistic showman in bad make-up with a knack for stirring up a violent mob. When the closing credits declare “Based on a character from DC”, you half wonder if they mean Washington.★★★☆☆In cinemas worldwide from October 4Festival continues to September 7, labiennale.org
