Did you catch Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ return to HBO? Sadly, she did not reprise her Selina Meyers role for the election season, though VEEP did get some attention and love recently. No, Julia L-D appeared in something quite different. She played a distressed mother in an A24 movie titled TUESDAY. We draw quick attention to it here.
It is a 2023 fantasy drama written and directed by Daina O. Pusić in her feature directorial debut. A co-production between the United Kingdom and the United States, the film stars Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Lola Petticrew as a mother and daughter who are guided by Death in coping with the daughter’s impending death by terminal illness. The movie’s world premiere was at the 50th Telluride Film Festival in 2023; it was theatrically released in the U. S. in June of this year and saw its debut on Max on October 18 and the Saturday night movie on HBO on October 19, 2024.
In the 110-minute tale, we get the lesson of letting people die when it is time as hard as that might be for all involved. Zora (Louis-Dreyfus) has a 15-year-old wheelchair-bound daughter named Tuesday (Petticrew). The girl and her mother are confounded by Death, but as we see in the trailer, Death is personified by a great scarlet macaw (voiced by British actor of Nigerian descent Arinzé Kene). Zora does what most would and challenges Death but once she realizes how much pain her daughter is in she comes to an agreement with Death on how to proceed, as we all must do.
Critics’ responses skewed more towards a favorable review. The Boston Herald said that “this striking debut film is like a live-action Studio Ghibli fable. Louis-Dreyfus is a revelation.” Decider declared, “Julia Louis-Dreyfus saves Tuesday from being too weird or too maudlin” Empire Magazine stated, This is probably not the film you would expect it to be. But its unexpectedness is its biggest asset, a moving and very eccentric feathered fantasy about life, death, and everything in-between.”
To be fair some saw it as muddled. The Guardian said as such, “As it is, the movie can’t quite bear to make the macaw properly funny, or properly scary. So the action exists in a tonal muddle.” Paste Magazine opined, “The film’s confounding tonal discordance…makes its observations far more embarrassing than existential.”
But in the end, it is all about how it strikes you as a viewer. It all reflects on where you sit in the uncomfortable notion that is Death. We’re just here to let you know that you can seek out TUESDAY on HBO or in the HBO Hub on Max.
