Tully--The latest from screenwriter Diablo Cody and director Jason Reitman, the team that brought us 2007's Juno, is another brightly-written comedy about pregnancy and motherhood. But the mother in question isn't a teen this time, she's a full-fledged adult. This may, indeed, be what's bugging her.
When we first meet Marlo (Charlize Theron), a suburban mother of two, she's massively on the verge of becoming a mother of three. Her husband (Ron Livingston) is an OK guy, but travels a lot for work, and spends a lot of time playing video games when he is home. Her sweet-natured but socially odd little son (he's euphemistically described as "quirky") creates difficulties at the private school he can only attend through the good graces of Marlo's irksomely rich and successful brother (Mark Duplass).
This same brother offers Marlo the gift of a "night nanny" for the new baby so that she can get some sleep. Marlo's repulsed by the idea at first, but soon after the baby is born, utterly overwhelmed and exhausted by her workload, she capitulates. The nanny, a lissome young hipster called Tully (Mackenzie Davis) swoops in like Marlo's own private Mary Poppins, not only minding the baby but cleaning the house overnight, making cupcakes and seeing to other domestic duties. Perhaps more importantly, she gets Marlo back in touch with her own identity.
The first quarter or so of this movie impressively dramatizes the daunting challenges of navigating motherhood, especially with multiple kids, especially if you aren't rich. It gets to you like a lot of movie depictions of harried parenting don't--it's almost frightening at times. This is partly due to Cody's snarky but emotionally plugged-in, glibness-free dialogue, and partly to Reitman's deft montages.
But it's also due in large part to Theron, who has a mature openness here, and a wild, harrowing beauty that makes even her own conventionally glamorous earlier roles seem tame. There's poignancy to Marlo, even a hint of the tragic, at the same time that she's a deeply sympathetic comic figure. As the breezy yet direct Tully, Davis is a fine foil for Theron; the two actresses slip into a startlingly relaxed and intimate rhythm from their first scene together.
As the story progresses, however, it slowly becomes clear that Marlo's conflict isn't just about the logistics of parenting, it's also about the perceived implications of the role. Marlo, we learn, was once an English Lit major and downtown NYC type, and, as with Jason Bateman's character in Juno, she's shaken by the prospect of permanently trading in the hip boho cred which Tully reminds her of for domesticity. Diablo Cody seems to regard this loss of pose as an adult rite of passage: For Cody, becoming a fully committed parent means giving up your dreams of being cool.
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