Tuesday – An Incohesive Fantasy Drama

Dealing with the loss of a child is no easy feat for a parent, and depicting it in films makes for a delicate subject. In Tuesday, director Daina Oniunas–Pusić (in her feature directorial debut), opts for an unconventional route in depicting a difficult subject. The story follows Tuesday (Petticrew), a dying teenager requiring at home medical care, a wheelchair and oxygen. Instead of enjoying life as a typical teenager, she spent most of her time having awkward chats with her nurse whilst rarely seeing her mother Zora (Louis-Dreyfus), who seemed to be avoiding the idea of Tuesday no longer being with her. In the end, Pusić’s ideas work more so than their execution. Focusing on the inevitability of death, the film fails to convey anything audiences haven’t remotely encountered before, instead doing much of the work through a talking parrot. While using the bird as the personification of death makes for a unique concept, it’s just too bad its execution never pans out the way the director intended.

As Tuesday was dying, Zora basically seemingly spent most of her time everywhere but with her daughter. In addition, the two soon found themselves literally introduced to Death (Kene). Coming in the form of a brightly colored bird, birds like Death appeared whenever someone was approaching the end of their lives before taking them away. Once Death appears for Tuesday, she acknowledged that it was her time and seemed to be at peace with it, however, Zora appeared a little less enthusiastic. From there, the story centered around Zora and her increasingly drastic attempts to stop her daughter from dying. Though the film’s vision is certainly bold, and one can appreciate its ideas even if they never come together cohesively, it is a shame they don’t completely come together. Had the film had the right script, its insights into death, mortality and life could have delivered so much more. Ultimately, other than the dynamic between Zora and Tuesday, its presentation of said themes, for the most part, never felt wholly unique.

While the material may be flawed, it was clear that Oniunas–Pusić had a bold vision for how she wanted the film to be. Straightforward enough, its eccentric approach leads to a wholly unique experience, featuring to a rapping and joint-smoking bird. However, its second half veers off the rails and into even more eccentric territory that never cohesively works together. The use of bold yet superfluous fantasy elements throughout the film, along with pretty poor pacing (this almost two hour film easily could have been 90-minutes), lead to a lackluster emotional letdown by the end. 

For being a film about death told through the lens of a teenager and their relationship with their mother, it’s strange how little emotional connection it creates between audiences and its main characters. Keeping audiences at arm’s length, the film never offers them the opportunity to become invested in Tuesday and Zora, or their relationship. Granted, Tuesday was dying but the story needed a little more to make the emotional connection click just a little more. Meanwhile, Zora’s arc didn’t feel truly earned, as her selfishness turned to the realization of the inevitability of her daughter’s condition, before eventually evolving to acceptance. Above all else, it would have been nice to see more scenes of the two bonding than the one mere montage. While the film later works towards bridging the gap between Tuesday and Zora, its turn towards fantasy never allowed that dynamic to come together cohesively. 

In terms of the acting itself, it was… fine. Louis-Dreyfus tries her best with a clumsy script that contains some pretty awkward lines of dialogue. On the other hand, Kene, as Death, has a mixture of hilarious dialogue, to some interesting lines from a bird, who was the personification of death, about being unable to avoid death itself, and then played a part in some more interesting moments, including Death rapping to a song Tuesday starts playing. The problem was that some of the lines they are given never feel convincing. Yes, the film is partly a fantasy film, but the awkwardness of the dialogue and how out of place some of the lines felt were hard to look past. Petticrew does their best with awkward dialogue and a thin character but they and Dreyfus were definitely dealt a bad hand from the start.

While Tuesday will surely work for some, a combination of fantasy elements that never cohesively work with the rest of the film, as well as poor pacing and a rough script makes it a chore of a watch. Had the film focused on having something more unique to say rather than its eccentric visuals, it perhaps would have fared better. That being said, maybe its eccentric presentation, rapping parrot and all, will win some audiences over but for others, its vision never comes together. Though its vision is bold, one can appreciate it and still criticize how it comes across, confusing, yet with an overly simplistic message.   

still courtesy of A24

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Jasmine Graham