Here are some photos of Lady Gaga and Joaquin Phoenix at the Venice Film Festival, doing the photocall for Joker: Folie a Deux. This is the sequel to the “surprise hit” for which Joaquin won a Best Actor Oscar. For that. For playing a 1970s Joker with significant mental health issues. It left me cold, but whatever. The sequel will show more of Joaquin’s Joker crashing out and standing trial for all of the murders. He’s placed in Arkham alongside Lady Gaga’s Harley Quinn. They fall in love, I guess.

Gaga went through a quiet period for the past year, where she was working and recording and not being very public with anything. She’s engaged, but she has a bad picker and who knows if this guy will last. She has bleached eyebrows now. She wore a jaunty beret to the photocall and she seemed to have a sweet relationship with Joaquin, who can be very prickly during promotional tours and around some of his costars. But Joaquin surprised me by looking clean and fresh and turning on the smile and the charm. He calls her “Stefani” btw. That’s her real name, but I would have thought that most people would still call her Gaga. She might introduce herself to people as Stefani though.

This is Joaquin’s first public appearance since he backed out of that film which he developed with Todd Haynes, a gay, period drama. Joaquin still hasn’t been sued over it, and there’s the sense that Hollywood studios are waiting to see what happens with Joker. Joaquin was asked about the situation a few times in the press conference but he declined to comment. He did talk about losing weight (again) for the role, and how Gaga wanted to sing live as they filmed so that’s how they did it.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.