Film Comment: Tully

Tully is a taut and impactful film about the joys and sorrows of motherhood. It’s one of the most visceral and physical representations of motherhood ever put to film. It’s beautifully acted and a wonder to behold. But it has its issues.

The first act of Tully plays like a parental nightmare. Jason Reitman’s tone and camera work is reminiscent of the cinema of psychological terror or body horror. Diablo Cody’s script provides moments of unflinching honesty about the realities of raising three children ‘alone’. Alone is in quotes since technically the mother, Marlo (Charlize Theron), is not a single mother. There is a father in the house, Drew (Ron Livingston), but he offers little to no assistance. He works and comes home to play video games in bed, with headphones over his ears, shutting out the family. Sure there are the occasional shots of him helping with homework or attending a birthday party, but there is a shallowness in these attempts at fatherhood. After the dramatic first act, Marlo’s brother (Mark Duplass) offers to provide her with a night nanny, a caretaker that allows the mother a few hours of sleep a night during those first red-eyed months. Drew never bothers to meet this night nanny, who is such an important character, they named the movie after her. This woman is alone with his child, in his house, but he can’t be bothered to walk downstairs and shake her hand. This plays not as an indictment on Drew, or of patriarchal households, but rather on the film itself since it places no judgement on Drew for his inaction, in fact, it rewards him with a night of wish-fulfillment sex.

But this film is not about Drew, or Drew and Marlo, or Marlo and her children, this is about Marlo and Tully. Taken at face value, the Marlo and Tully scenes are the best moments of the film. They are full of lively dialogue, as well as soul searching and philosophically intriguing ideas about ageing, motherhood and dreams deferred. Marlo needs Tully, her days are full of thoughts of only her children, and she rarely makes it out of her robe. There are hints of postpartum depression, but the words are never spoken, only spoken around, as if they were taboo.

Marlo and Drew both have steady incomes, hers provides for paid maternity leave. It helps that she has a certain amount of privilege, which is an unspoken word that sits heavily throughout the film. They live in a large home themselves and Marlo’s brother is extremely wealthy. He not only pays for the night nurse, but his donations get Marlo’s son into an elite private school. She is not a single mother in a low wage job, she’s an upper class married woman with a laundry list of class advantages. Everytime the film whips up a storm to show how hard Marlo’s life is, it remains difficult to forget these advantages.

There are spoilers to spare in this one, but this is not one of them: The last scene of the film deals with Marlo and Drew’s middle child, a boy, who by all indications is autistic -- another term the film finds taboo. In a troubling last moment, Tully suggests that the son’s autism has been ‘cured’. Such a tidy ending is indicative of the surface level interest this movie has in the real darkness behind this family. The first act is so strong and unique, presenting ideas and images often neglected by cinema, but the last hour of the film offers a lot to forgive.