Film

Tuesday
Director: Daina O. Pusić
Wild Swim Films
In Theaters 06/14

Never having been a big fan of mortality but assuming that I’ll be obligated to take part in it anyway, I always go into movies about death with a mix of curiosity and trepidation. Tuesday isn’t your average film on the subject, and that suited me just fine.

Zora (Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Seinfeld, You Hurt My Feelings) is a single mother with a terminally ill teenage daughter, Tuesday (Lola Petticrew, A Bump Along The Way, Dating Amber). Unable to cope with the thought of her daughter’s passing, Zora avoids her, spending as little time at home as possible and leaving Tuesday with a home care nurse named Billie (Leah Harvey, Foundation, A Gentleman in Moscow). One day, Death (voice by Arinzé Kene, I’m Your Woman, Love Again) shows up in the form of a macaw, as Tuesday’s time has come. Not knowing what else to do, the girl tells Death a joke about penguins, making him laugh. The two bond while spending the day together. Everything is going remarkably well, all things considered, until Tuesday tries to force her mother to talk about what’s happening, and things take a rather unexpected turn. Zora and Tuesday find themselves facing fate in ways that they never could have imagined.

Writer/director Daina O. Pusić makes her big screen debut with Tuesday, and it may be the most intriguingly unique one I’ve seen in American cinema since Charlie Kaufman’s Being John Malkovich in 1999. That’s not to imply that Pusić is trying to be another Kaufman: in a strange way, Tuesday owes far more to both The Seventh Seal and even E.T. than it does to Malkovich, and yet none of these comparisons should be taken literally, because this a rare movie that feels like a wholly original vision. At times uncomfortably dark and morbidly surreal, and at others whimsical and hopeful, Tuesday is a work of art in the truest sense of the term. Pusić elegantly explores every facet of facing the end with someone you love, including fear, anger, denial, acceptance and selflessness. The eye-popping effect of the macaw is stunningly well done, and the cinematography by Alexis Zabé (The Florida Project) is atmospheric and bewitching, as is the musical score by Anna Meredith (Eighth Grade). Still, for all of these impressive elements, this divine treatise on the nature of life and death rests primarily on the richness of the story and characters.

Louis-Dreyfus is among my favorite actresses of all time, yet I could count the number of her movies that I’ve truly loved on one hand with digits left to spare. Tuesday is the big screen vehicle that has eluded her for decades, and her intricately crafted performance ranks among the finest work of an incredible career. Petticrew is enchanting and lovable as the resilient Tuesday, and Harvey gets some well earned laughs as Nurse Billie. Kene’s voice work as Death tops them all, however, mixing comedy and drama with equal aplomb and giving us the most oddly endearing grim reaper figure in film history.

Tuesday is certainly not going to be for everyone, and it’s a movie that leaves its audience with a lot to take in and ponder. Personally, I found myself leaving it feeling surprisingly happy and with a sense of comfort and peace. I also felt very glad that I have a dynamite penguin joke to keep at the ready until my time comes. —Patrick Gibbs 

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Argentinian director Celina Murga’s new feature The Freshly Cut Grass (El aroma del pasto recién cortado) probably should have been called The Grass Is Greener, so much is it about adults desperately searching for happiness outside their married lives, only to realize they may have been better off staying home in bed and throwing on Netflix.

Following a pair of 40-something professors who teach at the same university, and who both start affairs with younger students that wind up blowing up in their faces, the film’s rather original structure tells two parallel stories that mirror each other without ever once intersecting. That novelty, as well as strong performances from a cast of six, help boost a movie that says nothing entirely new about adultery, marriage, or midlife crises, resulting in a relatively pedestrian if keenly observed ensemble drama.

Executive produced by Martin Scorsese, who held the same credit on Murga’s previous features The Third Side of the River and A Week Alone, the film follows a similar modus operandi by focusing on the turmoils of Argentina’s professional class. But Grass is also chattier and more openly romantic than the director’s other work, chronicling the sexual longings and deceptions of Generation Xers looking for love in all the wrong places.

The set-up is somewhat reminiscent of Woody Allen’s Husbands and Wives, although the location is Buenos Aires and the characters are all educated members of the country’s bourgeoisie: Natalia (Marina de Tavira) and Pablo (Joaquín Furriel) teach agronomics in the same college, are each married with two children and are both flirting heavily with one of their students.

In Natalia’s case, that student is the helpful, hunky Gonzalo (Emanuel Parga), while in Pablo’s case it’s the free-spirited, punkish Luciana (Verónica Gerez). Things aren’t going great at home for either professor, whose significant others — Hernán (Alfonso Tort) and Carla (Romina Peluffo), respectively — are unemployed and unhappy, leaving the two teachers to gradually wander into the arms of their very apt pupils.

Nothing feels altogether surprising in Muraga’s scenario (co-written with Juan Villegas and Lucía Osorio), except for the fact that Natalia and Pablo are basically living through the same exact story without either of them knowing it. From scene to scene, we cut between the two as they simultaneously cheat on their spouses, get better acquainted with their young lovers and try to conceal things on the home front. They both eventually realize that such things are much easier said than done, especially when photos of them in revealing poses with their students are leaked onto social media.

Despite the narrative redundancy, there are some subtle differences between the plotlines: Natalia experiences a kind of sexual awakening with Gonzalo, while Pablo seems to be rediscovering his youth alongside Luciana. Natalia’s husband, Hernán, reacts to the news of his wife’s cheating by temporarily walking out on her, while Carla decides to remain at home and suffer in secret when she finds out about Pablo’s affair. Gonzalo seems to be genuinely smitten with the older Natalia, while Luciana’s tryst with Pablo is just another facet of her carefree life, even if she clearly has real feelings for him.

The Freshly Cut Grass pinpoints all these minor differences without stressing them too much, resulting in a drama that feels authentic but also far too subdued. The film is carried less by its somewhat familiar plot — or rather, its two matching plots — than by solid turns from the ensemble cast. De Tavira, who memorably played the mother in Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma, is a standout as a middle-aged woman who comes to realize the limits of her own happiness, as well as the hard sacrifices required to obtain it.

Murga ultimately presents adultery as a necessary step for married couples looking to rekindle their romances and re-evaluate their commitments — an idea that seems slightly archaic at a time when open relationships and polyamory are all the rage, at least in lots of contemporary movies and TV series. The director’s vision of Argentina’s downtrodden modern love lives is nonetheless not without hope, showing how it may take a trial by fire, and a little bedroom action on the side, to keep things afloat.

A nifty little neo-noir carried by two likeable leads, Lake George follows a pair of down-and-out, middle-aged criminals who try to rip off a rich gangster and somehow get away with it.

Is that a familiar premise? Yes. Do stars Shea Whigham and Carrie Coon manage to make the material feel both fresh and engaging? Yes. Is there still a theatrical audience out there for this kind of modest, well-acted and slickly crafted B-level thriller? That remains to be seen.

Premiering at the Tribeca Film Festival, veteran director Jeffrey Reiner’s latest feature offers up a few welcome twists on a typical noir scenario: Ex-con Don (Whigham) gets out of jail and tries to collect the money he’s owed by an L.A. thug, Armen (Glenn Fleshler), who lives in a massive McMansion up in the Hollywood Hills. But Don is no tough guy, and he winds up getting coerced into killing Armen’s former squeeze, Phyllis (Coon).

There’s nothing new about that set-up, which is hammered out in the first 10 minutes or so. The rest of Lake George is all about how that initial plot unravels, and keeps unraveling until the very end.

This is because Don is not your typical outlaw, but rather a meek, world-weary claims adjuster who served a long prison sentence for helping Armen pull off a slew of insurance frauds. Over-the-hill, with a bad arm and paralyzed by panic attacks, he’s not exactly the right candidate to carry out a murder. And so it’s no surprise that instead of shooting Phyllis point blank as he was supposed to, he’s duped into teaming up with her to steal from Armen and start a new life.

Reiner’s script recalls Double Indemnity, Out of the Past and other classics of the genre where a semi-good guy crosses paths with a femme fatale and lots of bad stuff ensues. But the director doesn’t follow that formula completely, focusing on a couple of grifters who are already past their prime and just looking for a little peace and quiet. This is especially the case with Don, a broken man estranged from his own family and left with nothing but a small cabin (located beside the film’s titular lake) where he hopes to settle down and be forgotten.

Whigham has had memorable second roles in everything from Jeff Nichols’ Take Shelter to HBO’s Boardwalk Empire, so it’s nice to see him playing the lead for a change. He hardly utters a word throughout Lake George, yet he compellingly channels a man with nothing much left to live for, walking around stupefied and shell-shocked by all the wrong turns he’s taken in his life. Coon seems to be having tons of fun as a bleached-blonde seductress who initially takes Don for a major ride, until she begins to realize he perhaps deserves better.

Lake George rolls smoothly, if a bit slowly, along as a two-handed road movie marked by a few strong set-pieces — notably one that takes place inside Armen’s stash house and involves a hidden safe filled with gold bars, a gruesome killing and not one but several amputated fingers.

Reiner, whose credits include such TV shows as High Fidelity, Shameless and Fargo, doesn’t shy away from the gore, and like the Coen brothers he blends it with a brand of deadpan humor that underscores some of the violence. Another standout scene has Don and Phyllis trying to rob a second stash house, only to find themselves witnessing an excruciating sex scene that keeps getting interrupted by a yapping dog.

In the end, all of their shenanigans amount to the theft of something like $200,000, which shows how low the stakes here really are. But that’s also what makes Lake George quite endearing, despite its overall familiarity and 90s-ish vibe (think True Romance but with a pair of tired, old and fairly incompetent thieves). With little to gain and nothing to lose, the best Don and Phyllis may ultimately have is each other.