Directed By Daina Oniunas-Pusic

Starring – Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Lola Petticrew, Arinze Kene

The Plot – A mother (Louis-Dreyfus) and her teenage daughter (Petticrew) must confront Death (Kene) when it arrives in the form of an astonishing talking bird.

Rated R for adult language

Tuesday | Official Trailer HD | A24 (youtube.com)

POSITIVES

We’ve always pondered if we would approach life differently if we knew exactly when us or our loved ones were going to die, and at least in the case of Daina Oniunas-Pusic’s ‘Tuesday’, we have a compelling answer, from the ominous threats of this talking Macaw, whose appearance is meant to signify the end of days for those he stalks. While Oniunas-Pusic makes some questionable decisions with the execution of the experience, the emotions and actions of its characters are grounded in reality and believability, helping us to understand a mother who is understandably fearful of inevitability, despite the selfishness that initially consumes her, as well as an ailing daughter who feels bulletproof against a bird who has been sent to essentially relieve her of that pain. This affords two highly impactful performances from Louis-Dreyfus and Petticrew, who seamlessly radiate a lived-in brand of chemistry that affords each to bring out the worst and most vulnerable in the other, all the while grasping on to those last few frail moments where things will inevitably change for both of them. Julia supplants what is easily her most emotionally moving performance to date, appraising elements of anger and depression to grief that feel fleshed out with raw intensity and honesty, with her razor sharp comedic delivery occasionally present to imbed an air of humility to scenes overwhelming with crumbling humanity. Likewise, Petticrew’s sensitivity and compassion towards her winged adversary helps to appraise meaningful merit to the overhanging stakes of her life, garnering empathetic sympathy from the audience in ways that far transcend her teenage innocence, with frailty that feels naturalistically delivered without reaching too heavily for over the top manipulative melodrama. Aside from the performances, the film also has a couple of meaningful technical merits that help articulate believability and depth within executions that are quite often surreal, particularly in the design of this mystical bird as the messenger for life’s end. The bird’s visual likeness is rendered tangibly with some impressive levels of computer generated effects that are downright remarkable for the budgetary limitations that the film is plagued with, and the deep and groggy sound mixing of his vocal deposits inscribe an imposing heft and foreboding consistency that feel like an accurate representation of what death would sound like, if it were a living, breathing entity. On top of these things, the film is beautifully shot from ‘The Florida Project’s’ cinematographer, Alexis Zabe, who effortlessly taps into the beauty and allure of life, despite a film that essentially revels in death. The natural lighting of interior sequences casts a glowing effervescent that luminates the stuffily tense engagements between Mother and Daughter, and while most of the shot compositions are respectfully basic in their placement, Zabe’s tight proximity to the bird during close-up shots does help to obscure some of the practical set designs that could otherwise highlight the bird’s artificiality in design to stand out, maintaining the realism of this world, despite so many exaggerated instances. As for the storytelling, the script also written from Oniunas-Pusic does have problematic instances, but when it eventually settles down for a moving third act climax, it feels like the only time when the film realizes the extent of its true potential. In particular, I love the inspirational ambiguity of the ending, which might not answer all of the questions of the audience in clearly concise manners, but with the correspondence of a particular Ice Cube song, did exude the only successful emotion from me that ultimately kept this in the positive territory. Despite the film’s plot being so predictable with its inevitability, the script does manage to elicit an element of uncertainty that surrounds a character during the film’s final ten minutes, with hope in the least likely of places helping to surmise meaningful optimism to their future outlook.

NEGATIVES

This is the directorial debut for Daina Oniunas-Pusic, so many of the film’s hinderances can be forgiven, however a few creative decisions with the script and tone kept it from reaching soaring altitudes, rendering it a decent film that should’ve instead been great with its abundance of thematic heft. The tone itself is very erratic, which not only undercuts the momentum of the tender sentiment between mother and daughter, but also materializes these frequent clashes with the material that left me curious on whether I should laugh or feel concerned with the actions of certain characters. When you look at films like ‘Swiss Army Man’ or ‘A Monster Calls’, two films pertaining to death, you see material that reflects and enhances the tonal consistencies, but in ‘Tuesday’ that tone and material frequently feel at odds with one another, making this a disjointed mess at times, that feels particularly arduous to invest in, especially during the film’s opening act. For that period in the script, the mother and daughter are strangely distanced, and while I can understand that it’s the mother’s way of avoiding reality, it keeps their relationship undefined for the first half of the movie, in turn keeping the film from earning that deep-seeded sentimentality that it reaches so forcefully for. In my opinion, their bond and dynamic deserved more time and attention at the start of the film to properly flesh out what each of them means to the other, especially since the third act of the movie depends so heavily on the magnitude of the stakes that constantly hang overhead, and as a result I never came close to the somberly release that could’ve taken this film to the next level. This is also the period in the film where the pacing feels most strained, with initial engagements falling flat on the emotional scale, as a result of showing and not telling who our characters are. That idea should usually be reversed in films I watch, however with a movie as unusual and ambitious as this one, some grounded exposition could’ve went a long way to fleshing out characters with strange actions, from the word go. Beyond these issues, problems arise with convenience and logic holes that require a bit more suspension of disbelief than necessary, and it’s not just pertaining to the silliness of a talking bird in a world that otherwise feels as grounded as our own. While some backstory to flesh out the bird’s rise to power and various world-building, my deeper issues pertain logistically to his ability to administer last rites to every human and animal dying on this planet, giving us a small glance into a more compelling bigger picture, somewhere off in the distance. Without spoilers, the bird does disappear for a significant chunk of the film’s second act, and as a result we see the global devastation that springs from such an absence, and while it’s used as nothing more than background fodder to convey uneasiness, it leaves some of those meaningful aspects unexplored, which is unfortunate considering they would’ve only enhanced the story’s scope in scale.

OVERALL
‘Tuesday’ is a strangely unusual and thematically ambitious debut for Daina Oniunas-Pusic, who conjures the frailty and urgency of life through a talking Macaw sent to end it for many, each day. Though Oniunas-Pusic’s directional talents far exceed her screenwriting capabilities, mainly as a result of a bland opening act and many unaddressed issues of logic and backstory, the film is still a comfortable addition to the A24 library, with bizarre concepts eliciting profound sentiments that will touch your mind, even if they don’t always touch your heart.

My Grade: 6/10 or C+