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No one tell Joaquin Phoenix, but Joker: Folie à Deux is only the week’s second best psychodrama made with a pining for early 1980s New York. The actual winner of that contest is A Different Man, though you wouldn’t know it from the marketing. In the UK, Aaron Schimberg’s jagged black comedy is being released with fanfare so hushed, it may be audible only to bats. For those who do seek it out, the reward will be one of the most interesting films of the year: a singular tale of boy meets girl meets doppelgänger.
The first of the male characters, Edward, is played by sometimes Marvel star Sebastian Stan, but with a twist: prosthetics have made Stan a dead ringer for Adam Pearson, the real-life British actor whose genetic condition neurofibromatosis causes extensive facial tumors. (You might have seen him in Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin.)
Edward is an actor too if less successful. His face is the central fact of a life lived timidly in a cramped Manhattan walk-up while besotted with Ingrid, the wannabe playwright next door. (She is played by Renate Reinsve from 2022’s The Worst Person in the World.)
The thought of a jobless actor and aspiring writer making rent in New York feels wilfully dated: ghosting on gamier versions of city life present too in scenes of exotic bar life and gags about Woody Allen. That stretch to reality also sets tone for turning point: an experimental medical process that “cures” Edward. (You can see film as less gory companion to last week’s feminist body horror The Substance.)
The punchline is droll. An all-new Edward now emerges still played by Stan but with prosthetics removed and his own chiseled good looks in their place. Yet even gifted with features of movie star his aims stay modest; job in real estate beckons.
But now actual Pearson enters story with his own magnetic character and unpredictable consequences; much down to bravura flip Schimberg gives script keeping us off balance while questions spark from film; are we made or self-made? Does what we see in mirror ever really change? Ticklish ideas keep coming grimly funny movie that can even be weirdly uplifting its own skewed way.
Story comes focus on Ingrid’s debut play drawn from Edward’s life Cyrano de Bergerac referenced but telling tale disabled character movie very much about itself surprise how self-aware it can be without losing attention everyone else Schimberg deserves credit so too Stan and Reinsve — but Pearson brings depth and delight peekaboo game life art.
★★★★☆
In UK cinemas from October 4th and currently playing in US cinemas