Movie Review: Tuesday

Sometimes I go into a movie absolutely certain that it is going to make me cry. After finding myself welling up from the trailer for writer / director Daina Oniunas-Pusić’s Tuesday, it felt clear that this would be one of them. It turned out to be less of a tearjerker than I expected (though I definitely did need more than one tissue) and instead was more of a philosophical treatise on death and loss, and was honestly all the better for it.

Tuesday (Lola Petticrew) is dying of an unnamed illness. Her mother Zora (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) is emotionally unable to truly process this and so spends her days wandering the city and pretending to be at work, occasionally selling her belongings in order to fund the home health workers that mind her daughter in her absence. One day, while sitting in the garden, Tuesday is confronted by Death in the figure of a macaw (voiced by Arinzé Kene). She is obviously alarmed but still asks to be able to speak to her mother before being taken. Death obliges but Zora never picks up the phone, and so he spends the day with Tuesday as they wait for her to return home.

When Zora finally does arrive, she refuses to accept what Death and her daughter are telling her and tries to fight the bird, which is capable of rapidly expanding and contracting in size at will. Tuesday, having lived in great pain for some time, pleads with her mother to stop, and Zora is forced to discover a way to let her daughter go and cope with the loss.

It’s an unusual way to wrestle with these ideas but it proves highly effective. The image of the macaw paired with Kene’s perfect voice work adroitly blends a sense of menace, wry humor, empathetic wisdom, and a deep vein of sadness, making it one of the year’s most memorable cinematic creations. Petticrew is revelatory in the title role and exudes a wisdom beyond their years. But it’s Louis-Dreyfus who manages to truly sell the movie. There are moments in which her expert comic timing come into play, but it’s in revealing Zora’s pain and the ways she comes to learn that it’s actually selfish that she delivers an Oscar-caliber performance. If you didn’t love her as an actress before you will after watching this movie.

Death can be a frightening thing, both for the dying and those they leave behind, but something about this movie feels like a balm for those who worry over it or miss departed loved ones. Oniunas-Pusić reminds us that it is a part of life, and that without it things can fall apart in surprising ways. By using striking visuals, absurdist humor, and a fable-like premise she helps the viewer to examine the somber material in a fresh way while never wallowing in misery. It is a beautiful film that devastates as well as it uplifts, entertains as it elucidates, and which will likely remain with me forever. ★★★★★