TUESDAY: 3 ½ STARS. “swings for the fence, a surreal approach to confronting death.”
LOGLINE: Julia Louis-Dreyfus is Zora, the mother of Tuesday (Lola Petticrew), a terminally ill teenager just days from death. Guiding Tuesday’s passage, much to the annoyance of Zora, is the Grim Reaper, in the form of giant, talking macaw.
CAST: Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Lola Petticrew, Leah Harvey, Arinzé Kene. Written and directed by Daina O. Pusić.
REVIEW: Writer/director Pusić, in her feature debut, uses imagination and emotion to tackle human grief in an unusual, but totally relatable way.
A grim fairy tale for adults of loss and resilience, “Tuesday” uses fantasy to tell a story of coping with the passing of a loved one. Allegorical and more than just a little strange, it is a nonetheless a moving showcase for Louis-Dreyfus. With a shelf full of Emmy Awards for comedy, here she digs deep to play a mother who will literally go hand-to-hand with Death to keep her daughter from going over to the other side.
There are lighter moments captured within Louis-Dreyfus’s performance, but it’s the rough stuff, the raw, heartbreaking emotion that makes the character memorable.
The film breathes the same air as “The Seventh Seal,” examining the resistance to the inevitability of death, the afterlife and strength in the face of loss, but with one major difference. Here Death is a giant bird rather than an eerie, black-cloaked, chess playing Grim Reaper.
The anthropomorphic, metaphorical macaw is a swing for the fences, a surreal approach to confronting death and grief that would be ridiculous if it were not so sublime. The concept is otherworldly, but the film, despite its more out there moments, is anchored to the reality of the certainty of death in a profound and very real way.
“Tuesday” is a revelation in its lead performance, but also in the way it reveals the complexity of Zora’s journey through her daughter’s life and death.
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