There is something deeply beautiful and affecting about the central conceit of Tuesday: that a giant talking macaw appears to people in their dying moments, passing them over to the other side and easing their pain with a gentle sweep of its wing. In the hands of writer-director Daina O. Pusić, making her feature debut, what could have been trite, silly, or awkward instead has an almost pastoral quality. This is a distinctly secular movie—at one point the bird makes this clear—but it still has the incongruous feel of a lovely sort of last rites.
After a metaphysically imagined opening montage of Death, as the macaw is named, visiting a handful of people whose time on earth has come, we’re introduced to the title character: a teenage girl (Lola Petticrew) suffering from an unspecified terminal disease. On oxygen and assisted by a wheelchair, she lives at home with her mother Zora (Julia Louis-Dreyfus). When Death visits Tuesday, she barters with the bird for time to say goodbye to her mother. Zora, however, is not quite ready for goodbyes just yet, so she sets out to complicate Death’s plans.
It’s a testament to the exquisite special effects and the work of actor Arinzé Kene that any of this works. Kene mimicked the bird’s movements on set and provided the gruff, groaning voice, which was eventually used in the finished film. As such, the bird is not only believable, but believable as a fully involved character in this drama. Scruffy and mottled, as if its duties have made it dingy, Death tells Tuesday, “I’m filthy.” After she draws a bath for the bird in a sink and its feathers come out fresh and bright, Death gives her a grateful hug.
Of course, it’s also a credit to Petticrew that she sells such interactions on her end. The same could be said of Louis-Dreyfus after she eventually meets the bird. Petticrew and Louis-Dreyfus share a knockout scene in the climax that hits achingly genuine notes of apology and promise. In their hands, and with Pusić’s guidance, Tuesday registers as a magical metaphor for how we process death—and particularly how that might play out in this mother-daughter relationship. The movie might have come across as maudlin if it played this straight. Thankfully there’s a supernatural macaw to keep things wonderfully weird.
(6/17/2024)
