Displaying items by tag: Daina OniunasPusic

TUESDAY

US, 2023, 110 minutes, Colour.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Lola Petticrew, Leah Harvey, voice of: Arinze Kene.

Directed by Daina Oniunas-Pusic.

Tuesday is a strange blend of fantasy and realism. The title is the name of a teenager, ill, confined to her room. She is played by Lola Petticrew. Her mother, Julia Louis Dreyfus, is an American, living in London, devoted to her daughter, but also feeling the burden of the constant care.

The opening sequences suggest cosmic aspects, fantasy, the universe, earth… And, this is further confirmed with the appearance of mysterious bird, a Macaw, who communicates with Tuesday. Much of the drama is the meeting between the bird and the girl, the bird transforming from ugliness to beauty, often increasing in size, conversation and challenge. And, the question as to whether all this is happening in Tuesday’s imagination.

Eventually, the mother is drawn into the scenario, the encounter with the bird, hostility, violence, and a sequence on the beach, the bird taking possession of the mother.

The audience has to have a willing suspension of disbelief to appreciate what is going on in reality or in the imagination, themes of illness, mortality, survival, mother-daughter relationships, and the final challenge to the mother and taking some control of her future.

1. The title, Tuesday and her illness, her death day?
2. The London setting, the home, the interiors, upstairs and downstairs, the streets, the parks, the shops? Atmosphere? Musical score?
3. The scenario, realistic, Tuesday and her illness, terminal, her age, care, at home, her relationship with her mother, tensions?
4. The fantasy, the opening, the universe, Earth, cosmic themes? Peoples’ eyes? Deaths? The macaw, eye, plumage, black, later washing, colourful plumage? Increases and decreases in size? Intelligence, voice, memory?
5. The symbol of death? Universal and cosmic? Issues of life after death? Beliefs? Tuesday and her beliefs? Her mother, tested, beliefs or not? The religious symbols, the Gospel symbols? The mythologies?
6. Tuesday, her personality, looked after by nurse Billie, Billie and her concern, in and out? Involved in the finale?
7. Tuesday and the bird, enlarging, diminishing, playful, serious, conversations, something of an alter ego for Tuesday? The themes of death?
8. The mother, selling the furniture, selling the rats, the bargaining, at home, in the park, sketching, phone calls, sleeping, the appearance of the deathly characters, chasing her, in the tree…?
9. The mother, the confrontation with the bird, aggressive, beating it, burning it, devouring it? Its increasing in her? Her birdlike behaviour? Changes in size?
10. The absence of the bird, the range and deaths? Tuesday, diminishing health, wanting to go upstairs, the sale of the furniture? Memories of the past? Tensions with her mother, her mother behaving in the birdlike way?
11. At the beach, her mother and the bird, setting the bird free?
12. Mother and daughter, quiet, at home, Tuesday dying?
13. Her mother’s despair, wanting to die, sitting, the bird appearing, tempting her, taunting her, not letting her die, leaving her free to live?