You’ll never hear the word death in Tuesday. Or rather, you’ll never hear the word Death with a capital D, even if you see him. There he is, a giant macaw, drifting into rooms and soaring across streets, waving his wing over those that can no longer stay. This Death does not need to mutter his own name because, even though he has eschewed the traditional cloak and scythe for matted feathers, everyone recognizes him. The stabbed woman bleeding out in a park, the old woman who spits in his face, and Tuesday, a 15-year-old girl in London dying of an unnamed disease who throws off this avian avatar of the end by telling him a bad joke.
In her bold, magical, heartbreaking, and soul healing debut feature, writer-director Daina Oniunas-Pusić creates a contemporary bedtime story, one that deals with death with tenderness and humor. Fittingly for the Croatian writer/director, beneath its mournful mid-Atlantic tone Tuesday feels like the kind of fairy tale that could only spring from soil watered by the Danube, a story called something like “The Girl Made Death Laugh,” a fable that grandparents would whisper by candlelight to children as a first cushion laid against the inevitable fate that awaits us all.
Yet the director makes two truly bold choices that make the story feel completely new and fresh, even a little disorienting. First, that decision to make the dark visitor a parrot that can shrink and swell at will. He’s a figure that is by turns comedic, sympathetic, and menacing, even as the voice (provided by Kene) emulates author Terry Pratchett’s contention that he would speak like two slabs of granite rubbing together.
The second is in the casting of Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Zora, the mother who would do (and, as is gently revealed, has done) anything to keep death away from the only thing that matters to her. There’s been a weird undercurrent in some critical circles of claiming she’s been miscast, but in placing the Seinfeld and Veep star in this grounded fable, Oniunas-Pusić taps into the desperation of the comic who knows that nothing’s funny anymore. As the single American mom in London (the fate of the absentee father never even mentioned), she is absolutely without social infrastructure, save from the occasional visit from end-of-life care nurse Billie (Harvey). As Tuesday sees her time with their strange guest as one last act of wonder in a life that has been stripped of possibilities, Zora sees him as an enemy to be outwitted, beaten, vanquished. It’s the kind of raw, revelatory performance that will only deepen the viewer’s appreciation of Louis-Dreyfus, and quite possibly the best dramatic performance by an actor best known for comedy since Sarah Silverman’s depiction of emotional disconnection in I Smile Back.
This strange and beautiful three-hander exists in a wonderful synthesis of suburban London at its greyest and grimiest, and the fantastical world that is just at the corner of the eye. There’s no Wizard of Oz moment where Tuesday and Zora find themselves in Death’s realm, because Death’s world is our world. Their conversations about mortality feel like discourses in practical philosophy, discussions that only serve to illuminate the characters. Yet the wordy gravity is leavened by both a charming sense of humor (most especially a hilarious and unexpected needle drop) and spellbinding imagery.
While the path takes unexpected diversions of course, the destination is inevitable – but that’s the whole lesson of Oniunas-Pusić’s parable. Just because we accept death, she says, does not mean we do not live life to its fullest; nor does living life mean we can ignore death. It’s such a simple story but told with such grace, tenderness, compassion, and wonder, that all its strangeness seems familiar and welcome.
This article appears in June 14 • 2024.
