Now She Is Become Death

If you’ve ever thought to yourself: Julia Louis-Dreyfus should make a movie about death, then have I got a film for you.

In Tuesday, the erstwhile Elaine Benes plays Zora, a single mother whose teenage daughter, Tuesday (Lola Petticrew), is on the verge of dying of a terminal illness. When Death arrives in the form of a size-shifting, talking macaw (yes, really), Zora begrudgingly learns to let go and accept her daughter’s fate — but not before going on an emotional journey the likes of which I couldn’t spoil even if I wanted to.

If you can’t tell from just that basic premise, Tuesday is a film that’s kind of out there. It’s another weird one from A24, the company that, over the years, has brought us unusual films like Swiss Army Man, Everything Everywhere All at Once, and Beau Is Afraid. (More sane ones like C’mon C’mon, Past Lives, and Civil War, too, just for the record.) It was written and directed by Daina O. Pusić, an experimental filmmaker making her feature directorial debut. 

Pusíc deserves credit for the creativity at work here, and the way she portrays the way Zora goes through the stages of grief as she tries to prolong the inevitable. It doesn’t always add up, though. For example, we’re introduced to Death in a prologue that establishes how unfeeling and swift it can be when it decides someone’s time is up. But then it meets Tuesday, and suddenly Death is willing not only to give one of its victims a temporary reprieve but to hang around for a while? And when Zora initially tries to kill Death, wouldn’t you think Death would tell Tuesday the deal is off and would try to kill Zora, too? Also: Why does this movie take place in England?

Best not to think too hard about logic or details, I guess.

Likewise, Dreyfus gives a nice dramatic performance, staying down to Earth even when things get a bit crazy. At this stage in her career, with more Emmys and SAG awards than any other performer, and the residuals from Seinfeld still rolling in, Louis-Dreyfus has nothing left to prove. Given that, it’s been good to see her take on roles in recent years that let her show off her range. (Last year alone she starred in You People and You Hurt My Feelings.) I’m not sure she was the right actress for this particular role, but I appreciate the big swing.

Tuesday expects the audience to buy into its fantastical premise, and I’ll admit that I wanted to. Given my own struggles with watching a family member battle a progressive disease, and knowing that one day he will no longer be with us, I fully expected the film to hit me hard and/or to help me make more sense of things. Those in a similar situation might seek a comparable experience. And yet, Tuesday left me scratching my head. Days later, I’m still trying to figure it out.

In a time when so many movies come and go quickly, a film that stays with you and makes you think isn’t necessarily a bad thing. But Tuesday was reaching for deeper meaning, and unfortunately, I think its strangeness ultimately got the best of it.

I’m giving the movie a B–.