I gotta say it was a good day
Tuesday opens with us meeting Death. Here, he is no Grim Reaper but a size-shifting CGI macaw, whose colorful appearance belies his deep, gravelly voice (Arinze Kene). He sets his sights on the sick teen Tuesday (Lola Petticrew), who is suffering from a terminal disease that is unnamed but cancer-esque. (Yes, Tuesday is her name. No, it is not explained.) When Tuesday has a particularly bad gasping fit, she starts seeing Death and begins a conversation with him.
Meanwhile, Tuesday’s mother, Zora (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) is in a constant state of fear and denial. She spends her days pawning jewelry and furniture to pay the salary of their nurse, Billie (Leah Harvey). Zora refuses to openly discuss her daughter’s sickness even as it controls her every move.
After this intro of the respective characters, I’ll admit that I thought I had Tuesday pegged. I expected a somber fantasy realism drama in which Tuesday and Zora bargain with Death as a metaphor for accepting Tuesday’s upcoming passing. A mortality reckoning with just a little twist of color in there. Next!
But Tuesday genuinely surprised me. While it ultimately doesn’t avoid the expected themes and key plot points — it’s still a film about processing the inevitability of death — Tuesday takes a very circuitous path to get there, with some turns I very much did not expect and subsequently enjoyed. The end result is one of the most engaging and surprising films I’ve seen this year simply because it swerves away from its own setup.
Rather than the dreary, portentous tone you’d expect of a Seventh Seal-inspired rumination on death, Tuesday is a bizarre and unpredictable mélange of tones. There’s a reason for casting Louis-Dreyfus, the most accomplished comic actress of the past thirty years, in the lead — Tuesday has plenty of funny moments. The shifting tones are a double-edged sword, of course: I don’t expect everyone to be as charmed by a film that has a macaw rapping along to Ice Cube one scene and a nurse struggling to get her patient to breathe the next. But I vibed.
The film is the directorial debut of Daina Oniunas-Pusić, and she does a commendable job keeping the operation on the rails. Her most inspired touch comes in the sound design: Tuesday made me think of no less than The Zone of Interest with the way it uses overheard sound to suggest sinister, unspeakable truths just beyond the surface. It’s a powerful layer of gravity to a film that is as much about recognizing that death is not only a part of an individual’s life story, but a necessary part of the entire spectrum of earthly existence. (The film offers a truly macabre take on what “immortality” might look like in practice.) There’s a recurring sonic motif of a fly buzzing, a viscerally unpleasant piece of foley, that is a frequent reminder of the physical depletion that Tuesday goes through, and, indeed, we all must go through.
A large percentage of the film is a two-hander between Zora and Tuesday, and both Louis-Dreyfus and Petticrew offer strong performances. (Petticrew uses her natural Irish accent, and the difference in her and Louis-Dreyfus’s accents is left unexplained. I wish more movies that cast British or Australian actors in Hollywood films would do this.) But it’s Louis-Dreyfus in particular who steals the show — she is very funny, with some incredible line readings and even some physical comedy, but also a real emotive sledgehammer at the film’s sad moments. It’s one of my favorite performances of the year so far.
Although I’m quite fond of Tuesday, it doesn’t quite get over the finish line into true greatness. The big problem is that it loses steam in the second half when it’s clear that it’s already burned through its best ideas. The movie should probably be 15 minutes shorter than its 110-minute runtime. There are also some odd editing choices, too — I’m completely convinced some footage early footage of Zora was intended for later in the film because it includes some details that make no sense without mid-film twists.
Nonetheless, Tuesday is one of the most pleasant surprises of the year.
Is It Good?
Very Good (6/8)
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3 replies on “Tuesday (2023)”
Logically somebody would name their daughter ‘Thursday’ because she was born on a Thursday (That “Thursday’s child has far to go” according to the traditional rhyming scheme is presumably a bonus).
It’s an uncommon name, rather than an inexplicable one.
DANGIT, her name is ‘Tuesday’, but my point still stands (Though my dignity has gone rather weak at the knees).
Incidentally, “Tuesdays child is full of Grace”, so you can tell I was born later in the week.
Hah. Well according to https://datayze.com/name-uniqueness-analyzer, there are about 20 “Tuesdays” born per year, so you’re right that it has at least some precedent! (Though there are apparently fewer than five “Thursdays” born per year… I guess parents prefer “full of grace” to “far to go”)