It's impossible not to think of him, at least at the beginning of the new film by Luc Besson. The smeared makeup, the wig, the first glances between him and the police officer who stops him, the naive gesture with which he lights a cigarette while refusing to show his papers. Besson's Joker is dressed as a woman, specifically Marilyn Monroe. He drives a truck full of dogs of all sizes and seems too calm for the situation he's in.
The teaser and trailer do the film justice. So much so that it's not worth taking Douglas (an absolutely memorable Caleb Landry Jones) out of the role of a Joker confronted by a psychiatrist trying to understand him (played by actress Jojo T. Gibbs, who will be present at TIFF). Suffice it to say, it's the perfect opening film for a festival that invites you to movies. You, whoever you are and whatever opinion you have about dogs.
Besson brings out an entire arsenal here – he has weapons from psychological thrillers, gangster films, and social dramas, which he spins like cotton candy. With just a touch of magical thinking, enough to make possible a world where a great loser manages to become both the Batman and the Joker of his own life. And he leaves you, the spectator, to view him through all the filters you're used to, stripping him of each one in turn. "He told me that if you don't like what you see in the mirror, you just have to change the image.
No one can prove that the reflection is false and you are real. Maybe the mirror is the reality and we are just copying it," we hear in the film. Dogman is situated in the middle of these lines, between the mirror and reality, the distance sometimes feeling infinitely small. You might ask yourself, at the end, what you prefer: the image in Besson's mirror or reality? It's good that you have 11 days of all kinds of films to figure it out.