Tuesday

Zora's daughter Tuesday is gravely ill; she is cared for at home and her condition is worsening. Zora cannot talk about it. Every morning she leaves the house, walks about all day, sells their things and comes home in the evening, postponing the conversation with her daughter. Then something comes to the house. Death here takes the form of a parrot: it speaks, it grows and shrinks, and it hears every death in the world. Tuesday talks to it. Zora tries to stop it. Daina Oniunas-Pusić writes and directs. Julia Louis-Dreyfus plays Zora and Lola Petticrew plays Tuesday. The idea is to give death a body. The parrot was made by computer and its design is deliberately strange; neither endearing nor frightening. The narrative is built on grief and does not run the expected way; in the middle it turns entirely fantastical and leaves the realist frame. Julia Louis-Dreyfus comes from comedy and the part here is in an entirely different register; her performance is the strongest thing in the film. It is the director's first feature. Its limit is balance; the metaphor becomes too plain in places and the narrative repeats its idea several times. Who it is for: viewers who like drama with fantastical elements and unusual narratives of grief. Who it is not for: the subject is heavy, the turn in the middle loses some viewers, and the ending is unclear.