Julia Louis-Dreyfus stars in Daina O Pusić’s complex, delightfully odd tale of grief. Here’s our Tuesday review.
Films about death tend to be about coming to terms with the fate that waits for us all. Films like The Fault In Our Stars, Five Feet Apart, Meet Joe Black and Me And Earl And The Dying Girl all find characters accepting death, either their own or a loved one’s, as part of life and are able to move on.
Daina O Pusić’s directorial debut Tuesday is different. The only word I can think to describe it is “weird”. Thoroughly, unapologetically weird. While the film’s trailer seemingly promises a traditional, life-affirming weepy, Pusić isn’t interested in offering a gentle look at death.
Instead, death takes the form of a bird, a macaw to be exact. It flies from person to person, granting them death whether they’re asking for it or not. In fact, in the film’s opening montage, many are begging for the bird of death to spare them, and it’s genuinely hard to watch these scenes with the heavy load of inevitability hanging over them. The bird is overwhelmed by the sounds of life and death all the same, until it flies to the titular teenager, Tuesday, who’s dying from a long-term illness.
Tuesday (Lola Petticrew), unlike Death’s other victims who spit on his face and beg not to be taken, is ready to go. She begs too, but only to call her mother Zora (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) one final time. When Zora doesn’t pick up, Tuesday and Death begin to bond. When Zora returns home and finds the bird, she tries to kill it with fire – literally.
What follows is a soulful, peculiar and at times cosmic look at life and death. Zora struggles to let go of Tuesday, who is tired of living in pain and is ready to move on, but Death insists it’s her time. The film’s themes aren’t exactly new, but Pusić finds new ways to explore them and to impress us. Some will inevitably be alienated by the film’s constant, somewhat jarring tonal shifts, but if you’re willing to go with them – and that is a big if – the film’s many surprises are rewarding.
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The script, also by Pusić, has Louis-Dreyfus toe the line between comedy and tragedy as she plays up Zora’s increasing desperation to deny the existence and possibility of death, both the idea of it and the physical macaw in the room. While Louis-Dreyfus is mostly known for her comedic turns, films such as Enough Said and You Hurt My Feelings have given her the scope to stretch her dramatic muscles. Her work in Tuesday is sensitive but powerful. It’s the kind of performance the phrase “tour-de-force” was coined for but has now been overused to mean loud, brash performances. There’s a particular scene that’s too delicious to spoil here that truly allows Louis-Dreyfus to explore the uglier sides of Zora’s desperation with fire and fury, and it makes for a compelling watch.
Petticrew is also compelling, even if the script gives them less to work with aside from a generic, cliched teen close to death. Tuesday can often feel a little too shallow when it comes to its characters; the ideas presented here are simply too big to allow for any breathing room.
The bird is brought to life with impeccable CGI and while Tuesday isn’t exactly subtle about its more artificially created moments, the whole thing comes together well. Arinzé Kene provides the bird’s soulful voice, but the actor also did some performance capture on set.
Tuesday is at its best when it grapples with our own relationship with death. Should we ignore it? Deny it? Or should we, like Tuesday, welcome it, even nurture it? This isn’t a film about accepting death, but learning to live with it. As Zora learns to withstand and carry the unbearable burden of death, we might learn a thing or two from Pusić’s film too.
Tuesday is in UK cinemas 9th August.
