‘Tuesday’ review: Julia Louis-Dreyfus soars in unsteady drama

The Emmy-winner gives her boldest performance yet in Tuesday, A24’s ambitious, but flawed fable about how to face death.

2024 is proving to be a productive, public, and proactive year for the Seinfeld cast. First Jerry Seinfeld opted to transition from man putting his foot in his mouth to novice (and maligned) filmmaker with his bizarre Netflix passion project, Unfrosted. Meanwhile, Michael Richards (a man with more experience in public shaming) opted to explore himself and his troubled history with the recently-released memoir, Entrances and Exits. Now Julia Louis-Dreyfus (arguably the most accomplished and acclaimed of the four comedy heavyweights) is shifting gears into drama with the curious release of Tuesday, a mother-daughter adult fairytale that, for better or for worse, is unlike anything we have seen from a Seinfeld alum before.

Louis-Dreyfus stars as Zora, an exasperated, unemployed, emotionally adrift mother of a fatally ill teenage daughter (Lola Petticrew), a mature-for-her-age girl who likes to be called Tuesday. Throughout human history, Death (voiced by Arinzé Kene), as personified by a scarred macaw, will visit the tragically fated with little in the manner of solemn remorse. Able to shift in scale and size, Death roams humanity with dutiful diligence, never bothering to utter a word of farewell or grief. But things start to change when Death pays a fateful visit to Tuesday, the only person in what appears to be many millenniums who bothers to respect the corpse maker’s individuality. 

As a woman who has battled with her disease for years, and perhaps throughout her tragically shortening life, Tuesday is a woman who has reckoned with the coming of Death for a long, long time. Rather than face it with fear, she approaches Death with humor, grace, and gentle intrigue. In turn, Death regains its ability to speak, albeit in a deepened, guttural voice that will remind select moviegoers (like myself) of 2008’s sorority comedy, The House Bunny, and receives a re-education in the ways of the human spirit. As an act of kindness, Death grants Tuesday with the most earnest of wishes: that the daughter can at least help her mom say goodbye before the young girl leaves this mortal coil. But accepting death — and Death — will not be easy for Zora.

How to cope?

In her feature-length debut, writer-director Daina Oniunas-Pusic has crafted an ambitious (if strange and frustrating) meditation on the nature of life, loss, and our ability (or inability) to grasp the futility of our existence. Even at a little under two hours, the latest A24 drama is a lofty, sprawling story with a grandiose vision and poetic expressionism. Tuesday even features unsuspecting moments of gallow humor on par with Ingmar Bergman’s revered The Seventh Seal. It can rightfully take you aback and yet seem darkly earned.

Yet for as confident as it is in execution and admirable in its intention and scope, Tuesday can’t help but feel confused. Even with the parameters of its fairytale logic, it’s often unclear to the audience how dramatic, outlandish plot swings (which would be unfair to spoil prematurely) are even possible in this realm of reality. What is possible in this world? Can the physical and the metaphysical exist as one, even when the movie seems to bounce between the trappings of a grounded reality and the buoyancy of a limitless one? It’s a tough tone to grasp — one that demands a dedicated, brilliant actress like Dreyfus to be approachable, let alone accessible. Thankfully the Emmy-winning actress is more than willing to approach Tuesday at its bombastic and hyper-strange wavelength, which helps forgive a few of its odd misgivings. 

A second life for Louis-Dreyfus.

It’s refreshing and surreal to see Louis-Dreyfus in something so boldly cinematic. Even when the actress has starred in films (Enough Said, Downhill, You Hurt My Feelings) they’ve enjoyed a down-to-earth, humanist tone that didn’t betray her familiar TV career. Tuesday is easily among the most aspiring and challenging of the actress’ works, and she does make the most of it. Her performance is often wrenching, subdued, testing, and strenuous. Even when she can communicate humor, there’s an indebted sadness to this role that makes even the most dramatic moments in the second half of Veep look like the more silly, outlandish plot lines in the later seasons of Seinfeld. Seeing an established star push herself in such a way is endearing and appealing, with the rewards the performer gets out of it all clear as day.

The on-screen relationship shared between Louis-Dreyfus and Petticrew (who is also fantastic) requires a fair bit of rooted, strained tension and unspeakable sorrow. Those feeling stuck around even (or especially) when a talking bird in the form of The Dark Angel flies around the room demanding a young soul. While it might require some patience on the viewer’s end to make sense of this far-fetched premise, those who accept the movie on its own peculiar terms will likely be rewarded by the film’s dedication to its thematics of accepting the uncertainty of the beyond and the depths of our present. The takeaways aren’t as far-reaching as its premise, but it’s sold with gravitas and yearning, and one can’t help but feel touched by this tale’s stern, soul-searching emotionality.

The bottom line.

While watching Tuesday unfold, I often shifted between feelings of annoyance, elation, amusement, confusion, and curiosity at its stark willingness to go so unwavering in such bizarre directions (I should note that I went into this movie cold, and that’s maybe for the best and maybe the worst). Oniunas-Pusic is a director with a bold vision that will likely suit her well in future projects, and even if this movie can often falter in its overly-aspiring ambition, I’m often willing to meet a film halfway when it’s so willing to go against the grain and make something truly unlikely anything else that’s currently playing in theaters nationwide. Certainly, even when I mulled my ranging thoughts on this movie, I often found myself respecting and admiring its valiant, unsteady hustle.

Thus, Tuesday represents one of the more curious, compelling dramatic turns from a comedy star in recent memory. While it’s likely to go down as a divisive oddity rather than a clear turning point for the familiar TV mainstay, it represents a boldness and willingness to go for something far outside the realms of what we expect from this established performer, all while continuing her long, invigorating history of acting prowess. It won’t be an easy sell any day of the week, but when it comes to A24 movies that want to provoke daring, transcending filmmaking, Tuesday is thankfully a lively, not deadly, effort — if one that might make your new aviary visit more morbid.

Tuesday is now playing in theaters. You can watch the trailer here.

Images courtesy of A24. You can read more reviews from Will Ashton here.