Director: Diana O. Pusić

Stars: Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Lola Petticrew, Leah Harvey

London-based Croatian director Pusić’s film is a tonally uncertain allegorical look at mortality. Lola Petticrew is Tuesday, a fifteen-year-old-teen with a terminal illness who lives in London with her American mum Zora (Louis-Dreyfuss). We first encounter Zora as she is selling off a trio of stuffed rats, favourites of Lola, to an antique dealer. Curiously, Zora also spends the day on benches for reasons explained later. Tuesday is visited by a size-shifting macaw, evidently the personification of death, which speaks to her in a rumbling portentous voice, provided by Arinzé Kene. Tuesday attempts to hold death off via jokes and an offer to bathe the bird in the sink until her mother’s return. When Zora arrives at the house, she must take drastic decisions to keep the macaw of death at bay. This anthropomorphic avian take on ‘The Seventh Seal’ might have worked as a short film but over an almost two-hour running time, padded out with dull scenes between Tuesday and her daycare nurse (Harvey), the dark random whimsy becomes very wearing and the concluding stab at sentimentality falls flat. The CGI macaw at least is impressively realised.

David Willoughby

Follow David on @DWill_Crackfilm