Death takes many forms, both in real life and cinema. In the latter case, the most famous versions of death come in an ominous man in a cloak, popularized by titles like The Seventh Seal and various adaptations of A Christmas Carol. That's not the only way death can show up in movies, of course. Puss in Boots: The Last Wish delivered a great family film villain with a genuinely eerie wolf version of Death. How could anyone forget about Helen Mirren's possible portrayal of the actual personification of death in Collateral Beauty? Tuesday, the feature film directorial debut of writer/director Daina O. Pusić, makes history with its depiction of death, though. By manifesting this concept through a gigantic talking parrot, this is the first personification of death I wanted pet on the head.
Death (voiced by Arinzé Kene) deals with endless misery in his work. His job of ending people's life brings him face-to-face with all kinds of humans and animals, many of them not ready to die. But he's never met anyone quite like Tuesday (Lola Petticrew). This teenager, living with a terminal medical condition restricting her movement and breathing, greets Death not with fear but a joke. She then proceeds to offer this critter kindness by washing off some glue stuck to his feet. While Tuesday is helping Death, her mother, Zora (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) is struggling to cope with her daughter's condition. Zora would rather not talk about what's plaguing her only child, the person her entire world revolves around. That personal anguish will need to be confronted, though, Death has literally come for Tuesday, as it comes for all of us. Nothing can stop this parrot from doing his job...not even a mother's love.
If the premise of Tuesday already sounds like an odd creation, just wait until you see the strange corners the plot travels to in its second act. Those familiar with a certain Treehouse of Horror XIV segment will instantly get slight deja vu with where the plot goes! Pusić at once makes Tuesday a fairy tale, farce, tragedy, and even some occasional trappings of a horror film. Spanning so much territory at once results in an inevitably disjointed movie. However, that jagged narrative approach feels somewhat appropriate given the subject matter. Coping with death is never a linear process devoid of messiness. Why should movies concerning the topic be cohesive? Even the grim Seventh Seal made room for Death to whip out a cartoonishly large saw straight out of a Looney Tunes cartoon to secure one of his victims!
It doesn't hurt that Tuesday frequently wrings moments of effective pathos out of bizarre detours. This lends an emotional consistency to the piece even when the tone or unexpectedly offbeat plot turns upend the movie. Pusić and performer Petticrew prove especially skilled at crafting moving moments of intimate bonding between Tuesday and Death. Back in the 1980s, Bob Hoskins nearly lost his mind working against an invisible co-star on the set of Who Framed Roger Rabbit. That infamous yarns, not to mention countless modern anecdotes of actors working off tennis balls on green-screen sets, are cautionary tales about performing off co-stars who won't exist until post-production. Hoskins delivered an excellent performance even under those conditions. So does Petticrew in Tuesday.
The key to Petticrew's believable rapport against this CG parrot and Pusić's direction of their scenes is commitment. There are no sly self-referential lines to wink at the audience about how "weird" this scenario is. Instead, Petticrew instantly commits themselves to portraying a teenage girl exuding kindness to a wounded stranger. It's often easy to forget that Tuesday is interacting with a fully digital co-star. Meanwhile, Pusić's approach to realizing Death plays a big factor in making these sequences work. Death is not a deeply anthropomorphized creation. He's a parrot that can shift his size at will, but he doesn't have fingers, clothes, or even a radically cartoony face to allow for more human expressions. Juxtaposing that realistic approach with the increasingly warm dynamic between Tuesday and Death proves mighty affecting. Little bursts of humanity from Death like his line "I love sarcasm" are shockingly moving because of these character design choices.
As the plot of Tuesday gets more complicated once Zora discovers the existence of Death, Pusić's script gets a little lost in the woods while her filmmaking sensibilities are challenged by the confines of her budget. It's especially disappointing that there's a 20-ish minute stretch of Tuesday where the titular lead character is largely a disposable character. Tuesday was such an engaging protagonist that it's a shame when she's not at the center of the narrative. This stretch of the story also reinforces the unfortunately disappointing creative tendencies of composer Anna Meredith's score. Meredith is a deeply talented musician, but here, her compositions often hammer home the underlying emotions of key images or plot turns too heavily. Tuesday's more unusual developments and visuals need breathing room and ambiguity. The more ham-fisted musical choices in Meredith's score often deprive those elements of such vital qualities.
Despite being a movie involving a fully CG co-star, Tuesday works best when things get sparse. When the movie is just Tuesday and Death talking, the script really sings. That's an aesthetic Julia Louis-Dreyfus also thrives in. When portraying Zora lying on the couch with Tuesday, this performer is downright masterful in depicting the simultaneous affection and avoidance at play. There's genuine bonding here, Louis-Dreyfus never leaves the audience doubting her love for Tuesday. Even so, Zora quietly ignores her daughter's inquiries while they sit on this faulty couch. The nuances of that mother/daughter dynamic, where love and more complicated emotions can co-exist, are hard to realize. Louis-Dreyfus executes those intricacies with aplomb. Best of all, unlike other comic performers going dramatic like Steve Carell in Beautiful Boy, Louis-Dreyfus understands the importance of subtlety in selling a darker performance. The most emotionally devastating details of her work as Zora are worlds away from her gifted comedic turns in other projects.
Tuesday is a bumpy ride of a movie, mostly held by more rudimentary filming choices from Pusić and cinematography Alexis Zabé. The confines of shooting a VFX-heavy film like this one on a tight budget, not to mention the restrictions of filming around a digital parrot co-star, mean the shot choices in Tuesday are often not quite as imaginative as the script. However, it's also a deeply original production rich with inspired narrative risks and moving contemplations of coping with death. A cross between A Monster Calls, the third act of Terms of Endearment, and a Treehouse of Horror XIV segment, Tuesday is an audacious directorial debut worth commending. Plus, it's got the cuddliest depiction of Death I've ever seen in a movie. That counts for a lot!
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