By John Corrado

Death comes in the form of a talking macaw that can change sizes in Tuesday, an ambitious but uneven fantasy melodrama that marks the feature directorial debut of Croatian filmmaker Daina Oniunas-Pusić.

The film is named for Tuesday (Lola Petticrew), a teen girl with terminal cancer, whose mother Zora (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) is struggling to deal with her daughter’s impending death. The girl befriends the mysterious bird (voiced by Arinzé Kene), who acts as a manifestation of death, visiting people when it’s their time to move on.

It would be easy to say that Tuesday doesn’t quite stick the landing, but the film feels a little off right from the start. The movie opens with a very dark sequence showing the bird flying through delivering death to different people, which clashes with some of the attempts at humour scattered throughout.

The tone doesn’t match, which leaves the film often feeling at odds with itself, as it mixes elements of intense, apocalyptic drama with moments of attempted whimsy. It can’t decide if it wants to be a teen cancer melodrama or ominous adult fairy tale (think a mix between A Monster Calls and George Miller’s Three Thousand Years of Longing, but nowhere near as successful as either of those films).

Oniunas-Pusić’s screenplay leans into cliches and indie movie tropes, with trite observations on death and grief (the story could also be read as a very awkward metaphor for assisted suicide). It lacks the deeper insight that was needed for the film’s bizarre risks to pay off, and can get a bit repetitive at an overlong 111 minutes. The whole thing ends up feeling strained, with some awkward dialogue and inconsistent special effects.

Louis-Dreyfus is good in the role of a grieving mother, but there are also moments when it feels like she doesn’t have the strongest grip on her character. While she has fine dramatic instincts, Louis-Dreyfus was actually better in not strictly dramatic roles like Enough Said and You Hurt My Feelings, which allowed her to portray pathos from behind humour. The jokes in Tuesday don’t really land, and add to the uneven tone.

There is an inherent tweeness to the film’s handling of death. It oscillates between being depressing and trying to be hopeful, but the film never really finds a balance between the two, with the story getting lost in a sea of weird ideas that don’t fully coalesce. It will surely be a powerful, cathartic viewing experience for some, but it never really came together for me.

Film Rating: ★★ (out of 4)

Tuesday opens exclusively in theatres in limited release on June 14th. It’s being distributed in Canada by Sphere Films.