by Chris Feil
With Juno, screenwritwer Diablo Cody and director Jason Reitman made a quippy comedy on teen pregnancy with more subtlety than first meets the eye. Pairing again for Young Adult, they approached the bitter delusion of its alcoholic protagonist with patient and understated compassion. Now arrives their third collaboration Tully, an equally gracious and hilarious look at personal growth and self-awareness, this time with motherhood at the forefront.
It’s a special thing when we get even one great comedy with such a deep well of empathy for its subject, but Cody and Reitman have gifted us with an unimpeachable trilogy on empathy that challenges audience bias. And Tully is their riskiest entry yet.
Charlize Theron stars as Marlo, a mother of two young children awaiting the imminent arrival of a third. We know precious little of Marlo beyond her place as Mother, her life defined purely by how to get through the day as unscathed as possible. She barely sleeps, has tensions with school administration, and her husband steals away at night for zombie video games. When Marlo submits to the suggestion of her wealthier brother and hires a “night nanny” named Tully, Marlo slowly reveals herself to us as she also gets reacquainted to herself.
As physically and psychologically attuned as she was to Young Adult’s Mavis Gary, Theron is once again a powerhouse tragicomic performer here. Theron is arrested as Marlo is tentative, providing clarity to her character’s confusion without being prescriptive or definitive to what’s ailing her. Our ability to fill in Marlo’s past and the parts she ignores of her own present speaks to Theron’s layered work, but also make Tully as emotionally absorbing a comedy as it is. It boggles the mind why she is consistently omitted from discussions of greatest working actors when she’s delivering work like this.
Mackenzie Davis as the free spirited Tully is fittingly opposite to Marlo, carefree and indefatigably sunny when Marlo is empty and spent. Davis’s relaxed screen presence and smart maneuvering of Tully’s own shortcomings make for a deceptively precise performance, a more complex opposite to Theron’s Marlo than the cliche you might expect. While Theron puts it all on the table, Davis gives Tully plenty to hide and avoid. Ron Livingston as Marlo’s husband Drew also comes with that signature catch-you-offguard Reitmanian depth and is part of what makes the film’s third act leap work as well as it does.
At times, Tully embraces the full inescapable terror of motherhood and to near horror film levels. One post-confrontation parking lot scene becomes a particularly intense nightmare thanks to the well-established internal stakes and Theron’s exhaustive and exhausted performance, like It Follows if The It was a crying baby. Marlo is trapped in plain sight - in her body, in her situation, and especially in her own mind. Part of the film’s power is how efficiently it places us in her headspace, and then wrings from it cohesive notes of humor, utter horror, and compassion.
The rat-a-tat rhythms of previous Cody/Reitman collaborations are well suited to this vision of parental strife, but here they achieve a trickier high wire act of narrative rule-bending composition. It’s at first jarring when the film halts for one of many lengthy scenes between Marlo and Tully, much as it would be to the self-care starved Marlo. The attentions of Tully are dotted with strangeness, putting us in the unsure footing Marlo has when having to express herself to the film’s first open ear. These scenes feel tensely long, at first painfully so for Marlo before she eases into communication, ultimately getting lost in them as we too get to absorb her inner life. As ever, the film is structurally built to generate that empathy by illuminating her experience in all its fitful amorphous chaos.
Crucially, the film only focuses on Marlo’s relationship with her children to a certain extent. Cultural conditioning often reduces mothers through that lens, with even the most well-intended persons and their art falling into the trap. Yes, being a mother is an important piece of who Marlo is, but not nearly the whole or the simple definer. What the film is unpacking is the way those things become entangled, and Cody, Reitman, and Theron explore the nuance of what might seem obvious about this statement. If last year’s Lady Bird posited itself as the “call your mother” movie, Tully thinks that isn’t enough - it demands that you know her as her own person.
Tully has some surprises up its sleeves, particularly one crucial detail of Marlo’s life revealed immediately that is seldom depicted onscreen. The unexpectedness of this complication (it’s perhaps not a spoiler, but definitely something much more impactful when kept out of plot synopses and trailers) mirrors our cultural inability to understand or openly talk about situations like Marlo’s. And yes the film has a major rug pull, all the more unexpected given Cody’s steadiness as a storyteller. It makes a bold move, one that dares losing the viewer even, but ultimately pulls it off through its convincing empathic outlook. Tully actually heals something.
Seldom do comedies come from the gut (even Cody/Reitman ones) as this film does. Or do ones dealing with depression and mental health not dive into the easily indulged notes of cynicism or grand empty sentiment. Instead, Tully is rigorous comedy of emotional intelligence, both for its characters and for the audience.
Grade: A
Oscar Chances: A just world has Theron and Cody in respective Best Actress and Original Screenplay consideration, but spring release and low grosses are going to be a hindrance.