Jason Reitman’s new film is a mature exploration of an underappreciated subject: the plight of the beleaguered mom.
When people complain that they don’t make movies for grownups anymore, they’re displaying ignorance of films like Tully, a sly, thoughtful consideration of the ennui associated with being the mother of very young children. Yet because Tully can’t be summed up in a 30-second commercial and stands little chance of becoming a major Academy Awards contender, it won’t attract much of an audience. The thing we all claim to want is right there in front of us, and we don’t notice it.
Tully’s script is by the prolific Diablo Cody, whose credits include the movies Juno, Jennifer’s Body, Young Adult, and Ricki and the Flash, and the TV series United States of Tara and One Mississippi. All of these are focused on the dilemmas of women, but none except the teen-pregnancy comedy Juno was a hit. That’s a shame, because Cody is a tart and witty writer with an imagination that’s rangy but grounded in reality. Here’s hoping she keeps on exploring the psyches of women instead of being shunted off into the golden ghetto of billion-dollar superhero movies.
Tully takes place in a messy suburban house outside of New York City, where Marlo (Charlize Theron) is the achy, leaky, grouchy, middle-class mother of a breast-feeding newborn. Her given name, evoking the glamorous 1970s feminist Marlo Thomas, is a kind of inside joke about crushed feminine expectations. Theron, having added some 50 pounds of avoirdupois and wearing the kind of makeup that movie makers ordinarily reserve for corpses, does her best not to look beautiful, and partially succeeds. “I feel like an abandoned trash barge,” Marlo says. Everything about her is sagging, especially her outlook.
Marlo’s two older kids are each irritating in their own special way. One is a mouthy grade-school girl, the other a boy of about six who has major behavioral and learning “issues” and is about to get thrown out of his Catholic school. (The ersatz politesse of school administrators is perfectly recreated: “Expulsion is a punishment. We like to think of it as a dismissal.”) Their father (Ron Livingston) is one of those guys who work in mysterious “systems” and is frequently on the road. Even when he’s home, he isn’t really present: He plays video games while his wife is ready to kick holes in the walls. Yet the film isn’t particularly barbed about him: He’s a nice enough guy and would probably breast-feed if he could. There is simply an asymmetry between his role and hers: We use the words “parents” and “parenting” for both sexes, but there’s nothing like motherhood. Marlo never has a moment to herself and yet she is utterly isolated. Directed by Jason Reitman, who also collaborated with Cody on Juno and Young Adult, the film wells with sympathy for beleaguered moms, and I can picture real-life mothers finding that it triggers too much stress to be enjoyable. The crying noises and the filthiness of the kitchen were to me far more disturbing than anything I ever saw in a Friday the 13th movie.
It’s not angry or woke. It’s not one of those take-your-medicine indies that induce critical rapture and the awards that follow from it.
Relief arrives in the person of Tully (Mackenzie Davis), who answers the question: What would a contemporary Mary Poppins be like? Hip, new-agey, and sharing Marlo’s passion for oddball trivia, she provides an instant calming effect, and because she’s employed by Marlo’s rich brother, her wages are not an issue. Overnight, she cleans up the house and calms the baby while Marlo gets some well-earned rest. Marlo starts to lose weight, exercise, and erase some of the stress lines carved into her face. Her sex life with her husband is even reignited, and Tully gets the credit for that too. (Yes, things get weird.)
Your final perception of the movie will depend on how you react to a late plot development that I won’t spoil, except to say that it struck me as an ingenious way of tying everything together and providing a satisfying conclusion to a situation that doesn’t easily lend itself to satisfying conclusions. Tully may have its discomfiting aspects, but it’s also a clever and entertaining engagement with common workaday weariness. It’s not angry or woke. It’s not one of those take-your-medicine indies that induce critical rapture and the awards that follow from it. But in its gentle humor it carries a necessary reminder to pay more attention to the plight of mothers everywhere.