Tuesday [Review]
In Tuesday, death is a parrot.
Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Credit: Kevin Baker. Courtesy of A24.
Director Daina Oniunas–Pusić’s Tuesday is a magical realist fable about a mother who can’t come to terms with her daughter’s imminent death. The film was different than I expected, but still did’t add up to much more than the trope central to its core, and I’m comfortable saying it’s one of A24’s weakest recent releases.
Zora (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) is an American woman living in England, mother to precocious but very ill teenager Tuesday (Lola Petticrew). Zora spends her days out of the house, pretending to be at work despite having lost her job. She avoids Tuesday because Zora can’t cope with the fact that her daughter is near death. One day, Death (Arinzé Kene) arrives for Tuesday. The twist here is that Death is an ancient parrot—a macaw, to be more precise—who is able to change shape and brings lives to an end with a wave of his wing. He’s gruff, but brimming with empathy; he can’t stop hearing the thoughts of people around the world who are near death and its taken a mental toll on him. Tuesday is able to form a friendship with him by helping him through a panic attack and offering him a bath, kindness he’s not used to receiving.
Lola Petticrew. Credit: Kevin Baker. Courtesy of A24.
Zola won’t answer her phone, so Tuesday further charms Death with kindness to buy a little time to be able to say goodbye to her mother. Tuesday confronts Zola, still in denial, about her imminent passing. When Death appears to Zola to drive the point home, things get out of hand as she takes drastic action.
I thought Tuesday was going to be yet another movie about an ill or disabled person dying so that a loved one could learn a life lesson, and while it’s still that, the film’s second act twist makes it just a little bit more interesting. Lola Petticrew’s Tuesday is still more of a plot device than a character, since the film is really about Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ Zora, but the chaos introduced by Zora’s impulsive actions elevate the film just a little bit by further examining the role Death plays in life. I don’t want to spoil the movie from that point forward, because it really is the film’s saving grace and it’s not revealed in the trailers.
Lola Petticrew, Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Credit: Kevin Baker. Courtesy of A24.
Lois-Dreyfus and Petticrew deliver good performances, but the wise, world-weary, computer animated macaw voiced by Arinzé Kene was the highlight. The CG was good enough for me to never really question Death as a character in the film, and Kene’s characterization was great.
While my initial expectations of what Tuesday would be were not totally correct, I didn’t feel the Oniunas-Pusić did quite enough to lift it beyond the trite, melodramatic territory of its central trope. There are far better films about mortality and coping—or even directly negotiating—with death.
Tuesday is in theaters now.
