More than meets the eye in stealthy film
Tully
(out of 4) Starring Charlize Theron, Mackenzie Davis, Mark Duplass, Ron Livingston, Asher Miles Fallica, Elaine Tan, Lia Frankland. Directed by Jason Reitman. Opens Friday at GTA theatres. 95 minutes. There’s more going on than meets the eye in Tully, Jason Reitman’s stealthy new film, but what immediately seizes the gaze is the sight of the swollen pregnant belly of Charlize Theron’s Marlo.
It enters the room like it’s pulling her, and Marlo has trouble keeping up. Any parent, especially a mom, could identify with the bone-deep fatigue she’s experiencing, which soon will slide into postpartum depression.
Late into the pregnancy of her third child, one she hadn’t planned on, Marlo can barely keep awake, let alone deal with her cluttered house and the demands of the two children she already has: Sarah (Lia Frankland), 8, and Jonah, who is of kindergarten age.
Jonah (Asher Miles Fallica) has a restless form of autism that his teachers patronizingly refer to as “quirky.” But Marlo is patient and loving with her son, carefully brushing him all over with a soft hairbrush to help him relax.
She doesn’t get much help from her husband, Drew (Ron Livingston), a bland Everyman who plays video games in bed and who seems oblivious to Marlo’s needs.
Marlo’s wealthy brother, Craig (Mark Duplass), who has an annoying habit of making concern seem like a judgment, tells her he’s going to pay for a night nanny to assist with 2 a.m. feedings and other baby-care rituals so his frazzled sister can get a proper night’s sleep.
She resists, making an oblique reference to the horror film The Hand That Rocks the Cradle. But before she knows it, a bright-eyed and smiling young woman is at her front door, introducing herself as Tully (Mackenzie Davis), who says the words Marlo has been secretly longing for: “I’m here to take care of you.”
Let’s pause for a moment and consider who brought us to this juncture. This is the third collaboration between Reitman and screenwriter Diablo Cody, after Juno (which won Cody a screenwriting Oscar) and Young Adult( which also starred Theron).
In many ways, the most mature work yet by Reitman and Cody, the film is obviously informed by their own experiences as parents and as middleaged people who wonder, as we all inevitably do, about where the energy and drive of youth fled to. There’s much truth in a comment Marlo makes to Tully, who, at 26, is at least a decade younger than her: “Your 20s are great, but then your 30s come along like a garbage truck at 5 a.m.”
Yet Tully seems wise beyond her years, like a millennial Mary Poppins. She immediately sets out to make herself part of the family, so much that she raises eyebrows, but she also recalls the enchanting authority of the “real” Mary Poppins — and did anybody question Mary when she was dancing with penguins or talking to her parrot-headed umbrella?
Should we be whistling “A Spoonful of Sugar” or the film’s chosen tune, Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Want to Have Fun”? The latter is the one Marlo and Tully will be thinking of when they begin bonding more as BFFs than as employer/employee and a fraught situation transforms into something else.
There’s such a stimulating start to Tully, and such convincing performances by Theron and Davis, that it’s a little dis- appointing to report that the film doesn’t entirely land. Theron gained 30 lbs. for the role and, as with Monster, the movie that won her an Academy Award, she deglamourized herself to suit her character, not her ego.
For her part, Davis summons a true figure of mystery, one whose smile could mean anything from innocence to guile, or maybe something in between.
Tully is that rare movie that I wished were longer, in order to spend more time with two fascinating characters who could potentially have been part of one mother of a tale.