Tuesday review – Julia Louis-Dreyfus shines in fatalistic fairytale

Weird, wrenching and wildly ambitious, the UK-set debut film from Croatian writer-director Daina O Pusić is an achingly sad oddity. Tuesday (Lola Petticrew) is a 15-year-old girl caught in the claws of an unspecified terminal illness. Her time, she realises, is running out when she is visited by Death (voiced by Arinzé Kene) – a moth-eaten, manky-looking parrot who swoops around the planet, snuffing out the lives of all dying creatures. But there’s something about Tuesday’s spirit and empathy that stops Death in his tracks. Tuesday washes the filth from Death’s feathers, buying the parrot a temporary respite from the cacophony of the world’s suffering that fills his head. In return, he lets her live a little longer: her mother, Zora ( Julia Louis-Dreyfus , excellent), is out hawking the last of her possessions to pay for her daughter’s medical care. Tuesday just wants to say goodbye. But Zora is not ready to lose her daughter and goes to war with Death.

There’s a real elegance and economy to Pusić’s direction, in the first half at least. She has a knack for packing layers of story into seemingly insignificant details. Her tight grip on this fatalistic fairytale loosens a little as the film unfolds, but there’s no question that this is a remarkable and assured first feature.

• In UK and Irish cinemas