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This week at The Tryon Theatre, “Tuesday,” a powerful and artistic film, will likely move you to tears and reward your emotional vulnerability. 

“Tuesday” examines the unparalleled force of a mother’s love for her terminally ill daughter and the insurmountable pain she feels over the impending passing of her child. This film is the debut of writer and director Daina O. Pusic, a relatively young Croatian filmmaker portraying a wisdom in her art beyond her years. 

Playing the film’s lead as the mother in this film is Julia Louis Dreyfus, giving the most effective performance of her career. Louis Dreyfus plays her character with a terrifically convincing authenticity and depth, portraying complex emotions to a tremendous end. At its simplest description, “Tuesday” is obviously a heavy film, but that weight should not be a deterrent for any viewer. Rather, it should be a reason to engage, a guarantee of feeling, of being moved by the art at hand. 

This film is gentle and contemplative while possessing a great depth of sadness despite the subject matter being inescapably painful. Its guarantee of producing painful emotions is one of its greatest assets. Since the days of Greek theater, the catharsis of experiencing tragedy through art has been appreciated, and its value is immeasurable in the humanity it engenders in the audience. When we, in our consumption of art, are able to experience sadness and suffering, without the real-world consequences of those emotions, we expand our sense of empathy and deepen our perception of the real world, independent from the art that moved us. 

“Tuesday” makes use of a very unique narrative device, engaging heavily with metaphor and operating in magical realism. This device is that of a talking red macaw, one that can alter its size at will and can truly talk. This specter of death is not a malevolent presence but a mysterious one all the same, possessing great and ancient wisdom that is not fully intelligible to the human lives in its company. This fantastical element of the story is certainly bold but not necessarily new. “Tuesday” taps into a long-standing and cross-cultural tradition of animals being both totems and analogs for death itself, many of which, as with the red macaw in this film, are a portrait of death’s possible benevolence. The exact interplay of this analogy and the film’s relationship between mother and daughter are best left to be seen and experienced in the full scope of the film’s artistic value. The film’s artistic chances are daring but certainly rewarding in their application. 

Any filmgoer in search of a mature but gentle film will surely find themselves enraptured and moved by this earnest and heart-wrenching story. Additionally, for filmgoers who value originality in their art, “Tuesday” will surely appeal, intertwining beautifully gauzy cinematography and effects with a deep and complex story of love and loss, told for the very first time. 

We hope to deepen our hearts and share some tears with you soon, in “Tuesday.”