Lady Gaga and Joaquin Phoenix in a scene from “Joker”, the most anticipated movie of the year
On Thursday, one of the most anticipated films of the year arrives in local cinemas: “Joker: Folie à deux”, the second part of the film dedicated to Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker, arrives, and it arrives with a lot of music. So much so, in fact, that although the production repeated several times that it was not a musical, they hired Lady Gaga to be Phoenix’s character’s prank partner.
Gaga, in her return to the cinema, plays Harley Quinn, the Joker’s girlfriend, and confessed at the Venice Festival, where the film was presented, that she had to “unlearn how to sing” for her role.
“We work very hard on the way we sing. For me it was, in a way, like unlearning to sing, forgetting how to breathe, and letting the song emerge totally from the character,” declared the pop megastar, who on Friday released an album of music inspired by the film.
The first installment, which won the Golden Lion at the Mostra in 2019, and which earned an Oscar for best actor for Joaquin Phoenix, had several iconic musical parts, and that bet is now doubled: both characters perform several musical numbers and dances, together or separately, in a sequel that, in addition to the Joker’s girlfriend, has several surprises.
“Initially we took some references, Frank Sinatra, these kinds of legends,” Phoenix explained. “They were songs that Arthur (the Joker character) could have sung when he was little, with his mother,” added the film’s director, Todd Philipps, who also directed the first part.
“I tried to imitate that kind of sound. But I was like, ‘Wait a minute, this is not what Arthur is’ as a character,” Phoenix explained. “And she told me: ‘let’s sing live.’ And I answered: ‘no, no way,'” the actor revealed, laughing, alongside Lady Gaga. “But then we did it, because it was the only way. Each performance was live,” during filming, he explained.
THE PLOT
“Films tend to be a mirror of society. I think it seemed very appropriate at the time. But in terms of this movie we wanted to take risks, and the question was: what could we do that was really different, make something as surprising as the first part,” Phillips said of the sequel, which seems to want to accuse society of its own monsters. , partly a product of his voyeurism.
There, Harley Quinn is not the Joker’s psychiatrist, as played by Australian actress Margot Robbie, a sexy and crazy version of the character in “Suicide Squad” in 2016.
Her character is that of a woman imprisoned in the same prison as the Joker, who is serving time for the murders she committed in the first film. When they are put in the same group of prisoners to sing, romance breaks out.
The Joker’s trial for these crimes begins in Gotham City, and as it could not be otherwise, it is televised. In the streets of the chaotic city, support for the Joker grows. But this apathetic character, subjected to brutal treatment in prison, now has a new reason to rebel: he is in love.
In this somber and pessimistic film, Lady Gaga chooses to do what she does best: sing. “I wouldn’t say it’s a musical comedy, it’s very different. “We use music to really give the characters a way to express themselves, because dialogue is not enough,” the megastar revealed.
