Tuesday (The Movie)
June 27, 2024 | 214 words | Movies
It is the small quiet films where nothing much happens that seem to make the biggest impression on me. These little projects earn next-to-nothing at the box office, so among other things I come away grateful that such trifles can still find a way to be financed and produced.
Tuesday is the latest such movie to land on my list of all-time favorites. It is advertised as a meditation on mortality, so right away you know this is not going to be a summer blockbuster.
It is an intimate two-character chamber piece focusing on a daughter who is placid about her impending death due to a debilitating disease, and her mother who is not so placid about the coming loss.
Death is also physically represented in the form of a colorful macaw that can morph from very small to quite large, and is given to the occasional laconic remark.
The talking bird takes a little getting used to at first, but by the final act the viewer understands what the screenwriter is up to, and the parable-like device is employed to great effect in bringing this moving story to a satisfying conclusion.
Lola Petticrew plays the daughter, Julia Louis-Dreyfus plays the mother, and Diana Pusic wrote and directed, in her feature film debut.
Robert J. Cavanaugh, Jr.
bobcavjr@gmail.com