The roles of the man tormented him fit like a glove. After The Master , A Beautiful Day and Brothers and Sisters , where he played characters that are unstable mentally, Joaquin Phoenix plunges into the pure madness in Joker . The actor of 44 years was expected at the turning point in the film Todd Phillips, presented in competition at the Venice film Festival on Saturday night. The director of Very Bad Trip and his co-screenwriter Scott Silver ( 8 Mile , Fighter ) to return to the origins of the villain from Batman, drawing inspiration from both comics for the character of DC ( Killing Joke and The Man Who Laughs ), and show how Arthur Fleck, a marginal reaches of laughs uncontrollably, became the Joker.

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The eight-minute standing-ovation in Venice, the show, the press was excited by the incarnation demented Phoenix. Without a doubt, the spectators in the hall of the Lido will have been pleasantly surprised to discover that”it is possible to watch a film centered on a character of comics without having to fader of the deluge of special effects as it tries to drown a spoiled meat in a thick sauce”, as written by Thierry Cheze in First . “In these times of suites, making reboots a thing, a spin – off to shovel with their characters in the kilo, it is therefore possible to reach into the sketch to return to the essential: a story of implacable served by a realization with the chalk line and an interpretation never unnecessarily dramatic,” notes the critic.

Contender for the oscars

“For the first time in the history of cinema, a film of comic book dark in a sociopathie shocking and radical, where the brutality is never hidden and the folly of putting forward”, we read on the website Wide-Screen . And its columnist to highlight the performance of an actor “live and outrageous”. In addition to the Channel, opinions are rave review: The Guardian takes its hat to a film “gloriously bold and explosive”, while the Telegraph promises a film “that’s going to cause trouble to anyone who will watch it and probably in the world”. The daily dare even question: “ Joker is the next Fight Club ?”

the success of The film rests in large part on its main performer. The Independent welcomes a Joaquin Phoenix as effective as Heath Ledger as the master of chaos. The challenge was not easy after the outstanding performance of the Australian in The Dark Knight and that of Jack Nicholson in Batman of Tim Burton, but the actor from Walk The Line rises to the challenge brilliantly, “component a memorable Joker superb and tortured,” according to the critic of the Figaro Marie-Noëlle Tranchant. Phoenix, who lost twenty kilos for the role, gives life to a Joker “impressive and disturbing desire”, adds log swiss in The Morning . According to the actor, the physical transformation would have “affected his psychology”, bringing it to the brink of madness… The result is astonishing, for the belgian newspaper The Night : the comedian “has been confirmed as a broad-claiming the prize for interpretation of the venetian and the Oscars”.

“There was no need to wait Joker to know that the actor was in his home at the border between reason and madness”, shade Thomas Sotinel for The World. “Beyond the technical virtuosity of its interpreter main (…), Joker does not conceal much more than a collection of clichés,” he wrote, noting the resemblance between Arthur Fleck and Travis Beackle (the Vietnam veteran of Taxi Driver , and the similarity of the plot of the film, of Phillips and that of La Valse des Pantins . Joker has everything a “pastiche” films Martin Scorsese, he says finally.

Difficult to find an opinion as negative as elsewhere. On Rotten Tomatoes, a website specialized identifying the notice of critical cinema, Joker has 88% positive reviews. On the platform, the IMDB where users can assign a score out of 10 with a film Joker displays an insolent 9,7, after nearly 4,000 votes…