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‘Tuesday’ Review: Julia Louis-Dreyfus Takes on Death Itself – as a Terrifying 10-Foot Macaw – in Eccentric A24 Offering

In 'Tuesday,' Daina O. Pusić hatches a peculiar parable about a mother who refuses to accept that her terminally ill daughter must die.

Her strikingly original, if occasionally counterintuitive film brings the central idea of Ingmar Bergman’s “The Seventh Seal” into the modern era — trying to stall Death, if only for a matter of hours — anchored by a committed performance from a curiously miscast Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Pusić easily could have crafted a more user-friendly allegory, but part of what makes the film so intriguing is the unconventional way she serves up information, creating a sense of mystery around her central premise: “Tuesday” isn’t about bargaining with Death so much as showing a parent and child come to a shared acceptance of its inevitability. Louis-Dreyfus seems to be drawing on her sitcom-honed Elaine persona in her first scene, when Zora eyes a stuffed ape on the taxidermist’s shelf and turns it slightly so its genitals aren’t quite so prominently on display.

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