Tuesday

With her mother, Zora (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), in serious denial, her fatally ill daughter (Lola Petticrew, "She Said") is surprised to meet Death (Arinzé Kene) in the form of filthy, white-eyed macaw that can increase and decrease its size at will.  While the girl is frightened at first, she befriends Death and gets him to agree to delay collecting her until her mom can say goodbye to “Tuesday.”

Laura's Review: B

Writer/director Daina O. Pusić and her star Julia Louis-Dreyfus address the five stages of grief - denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance – with hope and magical realism. This most unusual feature debut comes at us with the cultural sensibilities of a Croatian filmmaker, an American star and a London setting, all of which make it feel odd yet familiar.  Young Petticrew is sure to get a career boost from her perceptive performance, a child having to parent her own mother.

Before we meet Zora, Tuesday, and her nurse, Billie (Leah Harvey, "Fighting with My Family"), we meet Death, the parrot curled up in the corner of a client’s eye.  We see grow larger than ‘life’ as he collects various people both aware and not that he is coming for them, their voices a cacophony in his head.  Meanwhile, Zora is oddly involved in selling a group of taxidermy rats dressed up as Catholic Bishops, bargaining with the shopkeeper while telling him that her daughter loves them, an odd admission from someone getting rid of them.  Later, she’ll wake up on a park bench, startled by the time and a stranger begging for help along a pathway.  At home, Billie will admonish her for not spending more time with Tuesday, putting Zora on the defensive.

While Zora’s been out, however, Tuesday’s been making a deal with Death, both enjoying each other’s company, especially after Tuesday draws a bath for the bird in a bathroom sink, Death reveling in his newly restored bright red feathers.  They’ll share a pot vape, Death confiding in Tuesday that Stalin ‘was a prick’ and Jesus ‘was sarcastic,’ delighting in providing examples of the latter.  But when Tuesday reveals Death’s presence to Zora, much to her horror, her mom goes on the warpath and when she gets the bird outside, stomps on it, lights it on fire, then swallows the last of its smoldering remains (‘You ‘et’ me,’ Death will later admonish).  What Zora hasn’t anticipated is that in so doing, she has become Death, a supernatural power which allows her to feel her daughter’s pain.

Pusić has added all kinds of layers to her story, distant apocalyptic scenes on the horizon illustrating just what happens to the suffering when Death ‘takes a holiday’ as it were.  And before Tuesday realizes just what her mother has done, she’ll demand to be taken upstairs, discovering all her mother’s family heirlooms have been stripped away, sold to keep them going.  Ultimately, bargains are struck – between Zora and Death and Zora and Tuesday – Death having become so entwined in their lives, he’ll return to nudge Zora back to life.

Pusić’s strange tale is complemented by the fairy tale trappings of Laura Ellis Crick’s (“The Beast”) production design and Anna Meredith’s (“The Favourite”) score.  Arinzé Kene, who acted on set with Louis-Dreyfus and Petticrew, brings an otherworldliness to Death with a deep, rumbling voice halting from disuse, and the visual effects which render him a parrot are magical, just as Louis-Dreyfus is made to go all ‘Alice in Wonderland’ when she outgrows the room she was standing in.  The actress traverses an arc of grief with a range of emotions, befuddled denial turning into rage before breaking down with the true acceptance of what is right for her daughter.  As Tuesday, Petticrew, confined to a wheelchair and oxygen tank, exhibits emotional intelligence beyond her years, endearing herself to us as she charms Death.

With “Tuesday,” Pusić takes a well worn genre and totally transforms it with wit and imagination.  It’s a bit weird, but a true original.

Robin's Review: B+

A teenage girl (Lola Petticrew) is facing certain death from a terminal disease but has come to accept her fate. Her mom, Zora (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), is in denial and refuses to accept the inevitable, until a size-shifting macaw arrives to help Zora and “Tuesday.”

First-time feature writer-director Daina Oniunas-Pusic takes on the subject of a dying teen and the impact it has on her heartbroken and emotionally challenged mom. The film begins with an extreme close-up of a motel in an eye. The mote moves and we see a tiny bird form – then it grows to enormous proportions. We learn that the macaw (Arinze Kene) is there to see Tuesday to the other side.

Things get complicated when Zora meets the macaw and a metaphoric battle for Tuesday begins. The bird represents the inevitability of Tuesday’s circumstance while her mom is the protective maternal side of the battle. But, the young patient, despite her condition, is the one who is really in control and deals with her mortality pragmatically.

I was surprised that the co-star of “Seinfeld” and the star of “Veep” would take on such a dramatic role but Julia Louis-Dreyfus gives the complexity and nuance the character requires. She is so distressed by the looming loss of her daughter and only family that, at first, she is incommunicado and ignores Tuesday’s calls. That changes when she meets the bird and the inevitable becomes fact.

Newcomer Lola Petticrew (at least, new to me) gives a grounded performance as a young woman facing death. Tuesday understands her plight and her ultimate fate and she develops and influences her escort to the other side. In the process, she helps her mother cope with her own coming loss.

The distributors did not do a Mother’s Day opening of this quiet story of a young woman whose life is ending far too early and her mother’s grief and helplessness to save her baby. That is probably sensible. This is, though, a solid story of a mother and daughter facing something that should not, but does, happen – a parent losing her child.

The metaphor of the macaw and death is, as far as I can remember, a unique look at the end of life. That is not quite correct. It is more one life ending and a new adventure into the unknown begins.

A24 releases "Tuesday" in select theaters on 6/7/24, expanding on 6/14/24.