A grieving mother, her dying daughter, and a macaw that’s more than it seems—’Tuesday’ is a magical, surreal exploration of love and loss.
By James Verniere/Boston Movie News
Death takes another holiday in “Tuesday,” the impressive feature debut of Croatia and London-trained filmmaker Daina Oniunas-Pusic. A live-action Studio Ghibli film, “Tuesday” tells the fancifully surreal tale of a mother and daughter’s struggle with Death in the form of a macaw that speaks (in the voice of Nigerian-British actor Arinze Kene) and can change its size from minuscule to gigantic. Tuesday (Irish actor Lola Petticrew, “She Said”) is the dying, 15-year-old daughter of protective and inconsolable single mother Zora (a wrenching turn by Julia Louis-Dreyfus).
During the day, Zora leaves their middle-class English home ostensibly to go to work. But she has lost her job, and she spends time sitting in a nearby park, observing, napping, and selling such eccentric household items as a pair of taxidermy rats in pontifical vestments to a skeptical shopkeeper. Zora has previously sold a Diane Arbus portrait and the upstairs bathroom tiles to stay afloat.
Bedridden Tuesday has an O2 cannula and big eyeglasses on her face. A nurse named Billie (an excellent Leah Harvey) cares for her during the day. When Tuesday first encounters the magical bird alone, she recognizes what it is and begs it not to kill her, although the truth is she is worn down by pain. “I must,” is the bird’s repeated reply in a male voice, arguably reminding some viewers of the monotonous corvid of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven.” We are also reminded of films featuring Death as a character: the already referenced “Death Takes a Holiday” (1934), the many versions of Charles Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol,” Jean Cocteau’s “Orphee” (1950), Ingmar Bergman’s “The Seventh Seal” (1957), Bob Fosse’s “All That Jazz” (1979), “Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life” (1983) and “Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey” (1991). “Tuesday” has a decided Kafka-esque vibe and appears to have sprung from Oniunas-Pusic’s 2015 short film “The Beast” about an aged mother and daughter visited by a bat.
In the opening scenes, Death relieves the suffering by waving its wings and sending them off. But Tuesday and Death become friends of a sort. They sing Ice Cube’s “It Was a Good Day” together. They vape weed. For unknown reasons, the macaw cannot utter “death.”
Kene, who has voiced Simba in a stage production of “The Lion King,” has an incredibly resonant instrument, bestowing remarkable gravitas upon our fine, feathered Death. He tells Tuesday that Jesus “was very sarcastic.” Death may suggest a bird-like version of Hayao Miyazaki’s friendly giant, forest spirit Totoro. Something strange and apocalyptic is happening in the outside world. Bees swarm and attack humans. Zombie cows roam abroad. A man with amputated legs crawls along a road. When Zora gets home and realizes what the macaw is, she bashes it. An astonishing transformation occurs. Zora and Tuesday go to the beach together. Their time is limited, we fear. Whose isn’t?
A co-production of Manhattan-based A24, which is on a tear, and the British BFI and BBC, “Tuesday” is a boldly surreal meditation on the subject of the death of a child, a subject I usually abhor in films because of its frequent exploitation. But “Tuesday” is gloriously, mysteriously different. It’s mostly joyful. Mexican cinematographer Alexis Zabe (“The Florida Project”) gives “Tuesday,” a film somewhat reminiscent of Rose Glass’s weird debut effort “Saint Maud” (2019), a grungy sense of wonder. As the mother willing to battle Death to the—ahem—death to keep her daughter alive, Louis-Dreyfus is a force of nature even more irresistible than the Reaper. Many major actors will follow Louis-Dreyfus’ lead, wanting to work with this new and unique talent.
‘Tuesday’
Rating: R for language
Cast: Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Arinze Kene, Lola Petticrew
Director: Daina Oniunas-Pusic
Writer: Oniunas-Pusic
Running time: 110 minutes
Where to Watch: AMC Boston Common, AMC Assembly Row, Landmark Kendall Square, and other suburban theaters
Grade: A-
Boston Movie News 
Comments are closed.