Death has taken many forms in cinema. It’s been Bengt Ekerot. Ian McKellen. John Cleese. Even Brad Pitt with blonde highlights. But in “ Tuesday,” filmmaker Daina O. Pusić's bold, fantastical and affecting debut, death looks like a lot like a macaw that's seen better days.
Covered in a thick layer of grime and oil with patches of feathers missing, “Tuesday’s” Death can be as big as a room or as small as an ear canal. Its booming, gravelly voice (that of actor Arinzé Kene) sounds ancient and otherworldly. And it all adds up to something profoundly unsettling. Not exactly a comforting welcome into the afterlife, or whatever comes next.
Click to Gallery
Death has taken many forms in cinema. It’s been Bengt Ekerot. Ian McKellen. John Cleese. Even Brad Pitt with blonde highlights. But in “ Tuesday,” filmmaker Daina O. Pusić's bold, fantastical and affecting debut, death looks like a lot like a macaw that's seen better days.
This image released by A24 shows actor Lola Petticrew," left, Daina O. Pusić, center, and Arinzé Kene on the set of "Tuesday." (Kevin Baker/A24 via AP)
This image released by A24 shows Lola Petticrew in a scene from "Tuesday." (Kevin Baker/A24 via AP)
This image released by A24 shows Julia Louis-Dreyfus in a scene from "Tuesday." (Kevin Baker/A24 via AP)
This image released by A24 shows Julia Louis-Dreyfus in a scene from "Tuesday." (Kevin Baker/A24 via AP)
This image released by A24 shows Leah Harvey, left, and Lola Petticrew in a scene from "Tuesday." (Kevin Baker/A24 via AP)
This image released by A24 shows Lola Petticrew, left, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus in a scene from "Tuesday." (Kevin Baker/A24 via AP)
This image released by A24 shows Lola Petticrew in a scene from "Tuesday." (A24 via AP)
This image released by A24 shows Julia Louis-Dreyfus in a scene from "Tuesday." (Kevin Baker/A24 via AP)
“Tuesday,” expanding nationwide Friday, is about death, and acceptance, between a mother and her dying daughter. But this is no Hallmark affair fitting for a sympathy card. It is prickly, wry, somewhat unsentimental, a bit gritty and awfully painful at times. Or maybe it’s just uniquely British. And you may just find yourself in a puddle of your own tears as a result.
Now, in terms of cinematic emotional blackmail, a parent coming to terms with a child’s imminent death is pretty much in the red zone. That sort of setup could produce involuntary tears from an audience regardless of the level of talent involved. Thankfully for us, there is immense creativity and vision both in front of and behind the camera, including not just the writer-director but the special effects experts responsible for Death as well as the haunting and innovative sound design.
Lola Petticrew plays the titular Tuesday, a teen with a “Breathless” pixie cut, a love of jokes and rap music and a terminal illness that has bound her to an oxygen tank and the use of a wheelchair. Her mother, Zora ( Julia Louis-Dreyfus ), has entirely disconnected from the situation. She tiptoes around the house waiting for the nurse, Billie (a lovely Leah Harvey), to do the caretaking. She stays out all day, pawning household items for cash to pay for the care, ignoring Tuesday’s calls and occasionally falling asleep on park benches. At home, she doesn’t want to talk to Tuesday about anything real — the death, her job, their precarious financial position — it’s all been deeply repressed and compartmentalized and is making everyone crazy.
The day we meet Zora and Tuesday is the day Death arrives. Billie has left Tuesday on the patio for just a minute to start a bath. All of a sudden, the girl who was just joking around is having an episode, gasping for air, when the macaw lands by her side. Death is actually the first character introduced, in an unnerving series of deaths setting an ominous tone that will loom throughout. Some are ready to go, begging for relief. Some are just scared. And all have the same outcome once he’s put his wing around them.
Tuesday, however, decides to tell a joke. This disarms Death (who bursts out laughing) and suddenly they’re in conversation together. She gives him a bath, puts on some music and asks a favor: She’d like to say goodbye to her mom first. Death obliges.
Of course the story both is and isn’t that simple. “Tuesday” becomes some strange combination of body horror, fairy tale, domestic drama and apocalypse thriller. It is weird and transfixing — never predictable and never boring. Louis-Dreyfus is both chilling and deeply empathetic as this woman who has been paralyzed by grief even before it’s happened. She seems to be preparing for her own death in a way, unable and unwilling to process a life without her daughter who, at this point, doesn’t even realize that her mother still loves her. Petticrew holds their own, going head-to-head with Louis-Dreyfus at her cruelest, exhibiting a wisdom beyond their years and fitting of a person who’s had to grow up and face death far too early.
“Tuesday” is ultimately a cathartic affair, whether death is top of mind at the moment or not. And it announces the arrival of a daring filmmaker worth following.
“Tuesday,” an A24 release in theaters nationwide Friday, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for language. Running time: 111 minutes. Three and a half stars out of four.
This story has been updated to correct Lola Petticrew's pronouns.
This image released by A24 shows Arinzé Kene, left, and actor Lola Petticrew during the filming of "Tuesday." (Kevin Baker/A24 via AP)
This image released by A24 shows actor Lola Petticrew," left, Daina O. Pusić, center, and Arinzé Kene on the set of "Tuesday." (Kevin Baker/A24 via AP)
This image released by A24 shows Lola Petticrew in a scene from "Tuesday." (Kevin Baker/A24 via AP)
This image released by A24 shows Julia Louis-Dreyfus in a scene from "Tuesday." (Kevin Baker/A24 via AP)
This image released by A24 shows Julia Louis-Dreyfus in a scene from "Tuesday." (Kevin Baker/A24 via AP)
This image released by A24 shows Leah Harvey, left, and Lola Petticrew in a scene from "Tuesday." (Kevin Baker/A24 via AP)
This image released by A24 shows Lola Petticrew, left, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus in a scene from "Tuesday." (Kevin Baker/A24 via AP)
This image released by A24 shows Lola Petticrew in a scene from "Tuesday." (A24 via AP)
This image released by A24 shows Julia Louis-Dreyfus in a scene from "Tuesday." (Kevin Baker/A24 via AP)
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — A major Russian missile attack across Ukraine killed at least 31 people and injured almost 130 on Monday, officials said, with one missile striking a large children’s hospital in the capital, Kyiv, where emergency crews searched the rubble for casualties.
The daytime Russian barrage targeted five Ukrainian cities with more than 40 missiles of different types, hitting apartment buildings and public infrastructure, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a social media post.
Strikes in Kryvyi Rih, Zelenskyy's birthplace in central Ukraine, killed 10 people and injured 47 in what the head of city administration, Oleksandr Vilkul, said was a massive missile attack. Seven people were killed in Kyiv, authorities said.
"It is very important that the world should not be silent about it now and that everyone should see what Russia is and what it is doing,” Zelenskyy said on social media.
Western leaders who have backed Ukraine in the war are holding a three-day NATO summit in Washington beginning Tuesday. They are to look at how they can reassure Ukraine of the alliance’s unwavering support and offer Ukrainians hope that their country can come through Europe’s biggest conflict since World War II.
At the Okhmatdyt children’s hospital in Kyiv, rescuers were searching for people under the rubble of a partially collapsed, two-story wing of the facility. Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said at least 16 people, seven of them children, were injured.
On the hospital’s main 10-story building, windows and doors were blown out and walls were blackened. Blood spattered the floor in one room. The intensive care unit, operating theaters and oncology departments were all damaged, officials said.
Medical personnel and local people searched for children and medical workers. Volunteers formed a line, passing bricks and other debris to each other. Smoke still rose from the building, and volunteers and emergency crews worked in protective masks.
The attack forced the hospital to shut down and evacuate. Some mothers carried their children away on their backs. Others waited in the courtyard with their children as calls to doctors’ phones rang unanswered.
A few hours after the initial strike, another air raid siren sent many mothers with their children hurrying to the hospital’s shelter. Led by a flashlight through the shelter’s dark corridors, mothers carried their bandaged children in their arms and medics carried them on gurneys. Volunteers handed out candy in an effort to calm the children.
Marina Ploskonos’ 4-year-old son had surgery for cervical spine tuberculosis last Friday. “My child is terrified,” she said. “This shouldn’t be happening, it’s a children’s hospital,” she said, bursting into tears.
Ukraine’s Security Service said it found wreckage from a Russian Kh-101 cruise missile at the site and had opened criminal proceedings on war crime charges. The Kh-101 is an air-launched missile that flies low to avoid detection by radar systems. Ukraine said it shot down 11 of 13 Kh-101 missiles launched by Russia on Monday.
Czech President Petr Pavel said the hospital attack was “inexcusable” and that he expected at the NATO summit to see a consensus that Russia was “the biggest threat for which we must be thoroughly prepared.”
Russia’s Defense Ministry said the strikes targeted Ukrainian defense plants and military air bases and were successful. It denied aiming at any civilian facilities and claimed without offering evidence that pictures from Kyiv indicated the damage was caused by a Ukrainian air defense missile.
Since early in the war that is stretching into its third year, Russian officials have regularly claimed that Moscow’s forces never attack civilian infrastructure in Ukraine, despite what officials in Kyiv say and Associated Press reporting on the ground.
Elsewhere in Kyiv, where seven of the city's 10 districts were hit in the heaviest Russian bombardment of the capital in almost four months, the strikes killed seven people and injured 25, officials said.
About three hours after the first strikes, more missiles hit Kyiv and partially destroyed a private medical center. Four people were killed there, Ukraine’s Emergency Service said.
The daylight attacks included Kinzhal hypersonic missiles, one of the most advanced Russian weapons, the Ukrainian air force said. The Kinzhal flies at 10 times the speed of sound, making it hard to intercept.
City buildings shook from the blasts. An entire section of a residential multistory building in one district of Kyiv was destroyed, officials said. Three electricity substations were damaged or completely destroyed in two districts of Kyiv, energy company DTEK said.
The head of Ukraine’s presidential office, Andrii Yermak, said the attack occurred at a time when many people were in the city’s streets.
Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
Rescuers and volunteers clean up the rubble and search victims after Russian missile hit the country's main children hospital Okhmadit during massive missile attack on many Ukrainian cities in Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, July 8, 2024. A major Russian missile attack across Ukraine killed at least 20 people and injured more than 50 on Monday, officials said, with one missile striking a large children’s hospital in the capital, Kyiv, where emergency crews searched rubble for casualties. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)
Smoke rises up after Russia's massive missile attack in central Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, July 8, 2024. A major Russian missile attack across Ukraine killed at least 20 people and injured more than 50 on Monday, officials said, with one missile striking a large children’s hospital in the capital, Kyiv, where emergency crews searched rubble for casualties. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)
In this photo released by Ukrainian State Emergency Service, rescuers carry a person after a Russia's missile attack in Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, July 8, 2024. A major Russian missile attack across Ukraine killed at least 20 people and injured more than 50 on Monday, officials said, with one missile striking a large children's hospital in the capital, Kyiv, where emergency crews searched rubble for casualties. (Ukrainian State Emergency Service via AP)
Rescuers, volunteers and medical workers clean up the rubble and search victims after Russian missile hit the country's main children hospital Okhmadit during massive missile attack on many Ukrainian cities in Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, July 8, 2024. A major Russian missile attack across Ukraine killed at least 20 people and injured more than 50 on Monday, officials said, with one missile striking a large children’s hospital in the capital, Kyiv, where emergency crews searched rubble for casualties. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)
An injured man talks on the phone after Russia's missile attack in Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, July 8, 2024. A major Russian missile attack across Ukraine killed at least 20 people and injured more than 50 on Monday, officials said, with one missile striking a large children’s hospital in the capital, Kyiv, where emergency crews searched rubble for casualties. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)
Emergency services work near the site of Okhmatdyt children’s hospital hit by Russian missiles, in Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, July 8, 2024. Russian missiles have killed at least seven people and struck a children’s hospital in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, authorities say. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
A child is carried near the site of Okhmatdyt children’s hospital hit by Russian missiles, in Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, July 8, 2024. Russian missiles have killed several people and struck a children’s hospital in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, authorities say. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
Rescuers and volunteers clean up the rubble and search victims after Russian missile hit the country's main children hospital Okhmadit during massive missile attack on many Ukrainian cities in Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, July 8, 2024. A major Russian missile attack across Ukraine killed at least 20 people and injured more than 50 on Monday, officials said, with one missile striking a large children’s hospital in the capital, Kyiv, where emergency crews searched rubble for casualties. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)
Smoke rises over the Kyiv skyline after a Russian attack, Monday, July 8, 2024. Russian forces launched multiple ballistic and cruise missiles against Ukrainian targets on Monday, Ukraine’s air force said, with explosions felt and heard across the capital, Kyiv. (AP Photo/ Evgeniy Maloletka)
Emergency workers at the site of Okhmatdyt children’s hospital hit by Russian missiles, in Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, July 8, 2024. Russian missiles have killed at least seven people and struck a children’s hospital in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, authorities say. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
A woman reacts near the site of Okhmatdyt children’s hospital hit by Russian missiles, in Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, July 8, 2024. Russian missiles have killed at least seven people and struck a children’s hospital in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, authorities say. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
Rescue workers at the site of Okhmatdyt children’s hospital hit by Russian missiles, in Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, July 8, 2024. Russian missiles have killed at least seven people and struck a children’s hospital in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, authorities say. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
Rescue services at the site of Okhmatdyt children’s hospital hit by Russian missiles, in Kyiv, Ukraine. Monday, July 8, 2024. Russian missiles have killed at least seven people and struck a children’s hospital in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, authorities say. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
In this photo released by Ukrainian State Emergency Service, people and rescuers work at the site of Okhmatdyt children's hospital hit by Russian missiles, in Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, July 8, 2024. Russian missiles have killed several people and struck a children's hospital in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, authorities say. (Ukrainian State Emergency Service via AP)
Rescue workers at the site of Okhmatdyt children’s hospital hit by Russian missiles, in Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, July 8, 2024. Russian missiles have killed several people and struck a children’s hospital in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, authorities say. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
Rescuers, volunteers and medical workers clean up the rubble and search victims after Russian missile hit the country's main children hospital Okhmadit during massive missile attack on many Ukrainian cities in Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, July 8, 2024. A major Russian missile attack across Ukraine killed at least 20 people and injured more than 50 on Monday, officials said, with one missile striking a large children’s hospital in the capital, Kyiv, where emergency crews searched rubble for casualties. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)
Rescuers, volunteers and medical workers, some in bloodied uniforms clean up the rubble and search victims after Russian missile hit the country's main children hospital Okhmadit, in Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, July 8, 2024. A major Russian missile attack across Ukraine killed at least 20 people and injured more than 50 on Monday, officials said, with one missile striking a large children’s hospital in the capital, Kyiv, where emergency crews searched rubble for casualties. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)
Children wait near the site of Okhmatdyt children’s hospital hit by Russian missiles, in Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, July 8, 2024. Russian missiles have killed several people and struck a children’s hospital in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, authorities say. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
Rescuers and volunteers clean up the rubble and search victims after Russian missile hit the country's main children hospital Okhmadit during massive missile attack on many Ukrainian cities in Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, July 8, 2024. A major Russian missile attack across Ukraine killed at least 20 people and injured more than 50 on Monday, officials said, with one missile striking a large children’s hospital in the capital, Kyiv, where emergency crews searched rubble for casualties. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)
Smoke rises over the Kyiv skyline after a Russian attack, Monday, July 8, 2024. Russian forces launched multiple ballistic and cruise missiles against Ukrainian targets on Monday, Ukraine’s air force said, with explosions felt and heard across the capital, Kyiv. (AP Photo/ Evgeniy Maloletka)
Smoke rises over the Kyiv skyline after a Russian attack, Monday, July 8, 2024. Russian forces launched multiple ballistic and cruise missiles against Ukrainian targets on Monday, Ukraine’s air force said, with explosions felt and heard across the capital, Kyiv. (AP Photo/ Evgeniy Maloletka)
Smoke rises over the Kyiv skyline after a Russian attack, Monday, July 8, 2024. Russian forces launched multiple ballistic and cruise missiles against Ukrainian targets on Monday, Ukraine’s air force said, with explosions felt and heard across the capital, Kyiv. (AP Photo/ Evgeniy Maloletka)
Smoke rises over the Kyiv skyline after a Russian attack, Monday, July 8, 2024. Russian forces launched multiple ballistic and cruise missiles against Ukrainian targets on Monday, Ukraine’s air force said, with explosions felt and heard across the capital, Kyiv. (AP Photo/ Evgeniy Maloletka)
Smoke rises over the Kyiv skyline after a Russian attack, Monday, July 8, 2024. Russian forces launched multiple ballistic and cruise missiles against Ukrainian targets on Monday, Ukraine’s air force said, with explosions felt and heard across the capital, Kyiv. (AP Photo/ Evgeniy Maloletka)
