Tuesday is a film about death. About dying, and about caring for someone who’s dying. Big words for a film where a talking parrot is a main character.
Teenager Tuesday (Lola Petticrew) is the kind of sick that doesn’t get a ‘get well’ card. She spends her days like no 15-year-old should: struggling to breathe, negging her nurse, and hoping for a crumb of attention from her mother, Zora (Julia Louis-Dreyfus). The latter spends her days loitering in a park, eating cheese, and looking at other parents with their not-sick kids. Mother and daughter know that Tuesday is going to die soon, but it’s the former that refuses to accept it. So much so that when literal Death (capital D), in the form of a parrot of variable size, arrives, Zora reacts the way one would if confronted with Death with a capital D – by kicking the shit out of it.
Julia Louis-Dreyfus has rarely played a character in so much pain
Croatian writer-director Daina O Pusić’s debut opts out of sentimentality, instead anchoring the story in a hard truths: people die, it’s not fair, there’s no opting out. The love between Zora and her daughter is never in dispute, but they are out of sync at the most important juncture of their relationship. Unable to face the reality of her daughter’s pain and impending death, Zora chooses to ignore her altogether, causing even more suffering.
Louis-Dreyfus, best known to one generation as the acerbic Elaine from Seinfeld and to another as Veep’s cutthroat politician Selina Meyer, has rarely been allowed to play a character in so much pain. Violently refusing to accept reality, Zora has been slowly erasing herself from living, as if eliminating all the things that made her happy would somehow extend her daughter’s time on earth. Through Pusić’s magical conceit, the film lets its characters confront the ugly and beautiful truths of dying and letting go.
Tuesday is not a film about dying, but about the choices the living make when confronted with profound loss. It doesn't break your heart as much as help put it back together.
In UK cinemas Aug 9.