Mark Reviews Movies: TULLY (2018)

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Review by Mark Dujsik | May 3, 2018

Screenwriter Diablo Cody and director Jason Reitman team up for the third time with Tully, the story of a woman whose life seems out of her own control as she prepares to give birth to her third child. This should, in theory, be easier than the first two times, or at least that's the common perception of people who theorize about such matters without having experienced them. Marlo (Charlize Theron) seems about as prepared for pregnancy and birth as a woman can be. She even occasionally forgets that she's pregnant when the subject of another child on the way comes up in conversation. One could see this as the casual forgetfulness of someone who's an old hand at something. The other option is denial.

These aren't mutually exclusive, of course, and one of the major strengths of Cody's screenplay is that allows Marlo to be as conflicted a character as she is. It's entirely reasonable to believe that Marlo is both ready to have a third kid and dreading that reality. Motherhood here is portrayed as a great mystery—an unknowable-until-it's-happening balance of moments of pure bliss interrupted by the day-to-day grind of raising children. At this point in Marlo's life, though, it seems that grind of motherhood is only occasionally interrupted by the joy. For all of the potential happiness and love he or she could bring, a new baby is mostly looking like a whole new list of things to add to the current grind.

There's a lot to Marlo as she is, and most of the movie accepts that a lot is enough. Things change considerably and considerably for the worse, though, when it becomes clear that Cody wants to do more than enough with this character. This doesn't seem like the sort of story that's going to hinge on a third-act revelation that changes our perception of everything that came before it, but here we are, with a fine character study about the routine pressures of motherhood that ultimately shows us that we've been watching a different sort of character.

Until that point, which comes so late that it's almost tempting to forgive the movie for its overreach, we follow Marlo in thick of unappreciated parenting. Her husband Drew (Ron Livingston) is barely around, working an unspecified job that has him taking business trips around the country. When he is home, it's for dinner and for late-night sessions with video games—his view in bed taken up by the TV screen and his awareness of whatever his wife might want to say hindered by a big pair of headphones. Their daughter Sarah (Lia Frankland) is at an age of bluntly saying what she notices, and their son Jonah (Asher Miles Fallica) has some developmental issues that people have only diagnosed as "quirky."

To give her a bit of a break, Marlo's brother Craig (Mark Duplass), a well-to-do guy with a nanny to take care of his and wife's (played by Elaine Tan) kids, has paid for a night nanny for Marlo. The nanny, obviously, would care for the baby from night until morning, allowing Marlo to get some peaceful and quiet sleep. Marlo is hesitant and suspicious at first, but after a few days of sleepless activity, she decides to call the nanny, named Tully (Mackenzie Davis) and as off-beat in her personality as she is full of sage advice beyond her 20-some years.

The free-spirited Tully serves as a foil for Marlo, whose life has become a series of drives to school, meetings about her kids, meals, and, now, changing diapers and nursing. Tully here, played with impish delight by Davis, isn't a simple cure-all for Marlo's dissatisfaction. She's merely a brief respite from the hectic nature of being a full-time parent, the constant sense of feeling like a stranger in one's own body, and the lack of any kind of meaningful communication with a friend, a family member, or even her husband.

Theron's performance is as emotionally and psychologically rich as it is physically transformative. Marlo's inner contradictions, insecurities, and desires for something more are on open display within Theron's work.

It's suggested that, at some point in her life, Marlo was more like Tully than she is now—living with a girlfriend in the city and filled with unfocused but optimistic ambition. It's also suggested that, after her previous pregnancy, Marlo had some kind of psychological issue. Cody's screenplay isn't explicit in this regard. At first, we assume it's because the answer is obvious, such as post-partum depression. There's the nagging suspicion that it's something more than that obvious answer, as well as the thought that there's more to Tully than what movie shows us. The instinct is to sweep away these thoughts as absurd, because surely there's no need for such trickery. Surely, the surface-level of the movie, which approaches Marlo with sympathetic humor and compassionate understanding, is all that matters.

These assumptions, though, turn out to be incorrect. Tully provides a climactic moment that's wholly misguided—both borderline-insulting to the main character and out-of-character with everything that has come before it. It's a transparent attempt to surprise and shock the audience. In the revelation's severity and the movie's hand-waving of its consequences, though, we're only left baffled by Cody's decision to turn a story this understandable into one that's needlessly convoluted.

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