ellauri112.html on line 607: Drew’s brother Craig (Mark Duplass) only adds to her consternation. Craig and his wife are rich, over-achievers who can’t help but look down at Marlo’s messy mothering. Är dom inte äckliga? Spypåsarna till vänster om dörrarna. Life is not just boring, it is a fucking pile of clichés. You´ve seen one of them, you´ve seen them all. Jussi Snellman, don´t bother with reincarnation!
ellauri112.html on line 633: Motherhood is essentially roasted here, making it easy to laugh at Marlo’s discomforts. Perhaps every element of raising children can be either hellish or heavenly, depending on one’s outlook.
ellauri112.html on line 665: Every day there’s more to do, less time to do it in, and the ginormous stress starts eating at her soon as her swollen feet hit the floor. It doesn’t help that her husband Drew (Ron Livingston) is of the old school variety, the kind of man who thinks he doesn’t have to do much around the house because he’s the breadwinner. That means most of the cooking, cleaning, and caring for the kids falls upon Marlo’s shoulders.
ellauri112.html on line 681: Yet to hail the film as a feminist project is to value the representation of the structural co-option of maternity over its interrogation. Tully’s treatment of social reproduction is dangerously simplistic. Cody has spoken in interviews about how her own, financially easier, experience of parenting in L.A. inspired her to explore a narrative in which economic anxieties are combined with the other hardships of parenthood, yet here class and poverty are only fleeting concerns. The transactional system of care that governs child-rearing under capitalism is done away with via Tully’s otherworldliness. Until the revelation of her non-existence, the viewer, although encouraged to believe in her, is never asked to consider her financial reality, and the fact that the service is paid for by Marlo’s wealthy brother is a narrative convenience that reinforces its fairytale quality. Similarly, Tully’s whiteness allows the racial politics of care to be completely overlooked, and the repeated idea that it’s ‘unnatural’ for hired help to bond with your newborn is taken as a given, rather than seen as an impetus for a consideration of the social conditions that require mothers to make that choice.
ellauri112.html on line 683: Marlo, already a mother of two, begins the film heavily, outrageously pregnant: we learn, in rapid succession, that this third pregnancy was unwanted, that her husband does little of the domestic labour, and that her “shitty” upbringing is the reason she’s so committed to her nuclear family unit. Postnatal depression, never named, haunts the narrative: her wealthy brother offers to pay for a night nanny to avoid, in his words, the advent of another “bad time” like the one that followed the birth of her son, Jonah. When the nanny arrives – described by more than one reviewer as a “millennial Mary Poppins” – the panacea seems to be working. Not only does she look after the baby at night but she also operates as a kind of empathy machine, listening to Marlo’s problems, sharing sangria in the garden, and baking the Minions cupcakes that Marlo herself never has the time to make. The postnatal depression, it seems, disperses; Jonah – who has “emotional problems” – finds a place at a school more suited to his needs, family dinners get increasingly wholesome, and Marlo does a passable Stevie Nicks impression at a child’s birthday party. And then comes the twist: after a bender in Brooklyn with Tully, a sleep-deprived Marlo, drunk at the wheel, drives her car off a bridge and ends up in hospital, and we realise there was nobody else in the car. Her maiden name, we learn, was Tully.
ellauri112.html on line 689: The film is supposedly an ode to the ‘modern parenthood experience’ that’s interspersed with ‘humor and raw honesty.’ I wouldn’t know because I don’t have kids. Perhaps this realism is lost on me because I’m not a parent, but that’s where the film breaks down: it failed to spark even an ounce of empathy in me for its protagonist. Motherhood is portrayed as many childless people like me envision, an absolute misery of an existence (I left the theater thinking thank god I don’t have kids). A successful film would have made Marlo’s predicament relatable to everyone.
ellauri112.html on line 705: The 26-year-old nanny’s name is Tully (played by Mackenzie Davis of “Halt and Catch Fire” fame), and she’s a free spirit, albeit one with a serious work ethic. Tully instantly takes over the house, manages Marlo’s baby effortlessly, and starts taking care of mom too. Not only does she give her the precious “alone time” she desperately needs and craves, but Tully ends up becoming a sort of therapist to her, along with a best friend, muse, and a regular shoulder to cry on.
ellauri112.html on line 727: The film’s strength – for its first two thirds – is the relationship between the two women at the heart of the narrative. We learn through a clumsy coincidence at the beginning of the film that Marlo is bisexual; as her intimacy with Tully expands to fill the vacuum of her absentee marriage, it becomes a tender eroticism. This is mediated, always, through other bodies: as Tully cradles the baby who has just finished feeding, she talks about how the ‘molecules’ of the child still exist within the mother; later, in a bar toilet, she gently wets a paper towel and uses it to draw the milk out of Marlo’s swollen breasts. In a pivotal scene, Marlo sits behind Tully and instructs her on what to do to arouse her sleep-befuddled husband. This moment can be read as emblematic of the film’s mistreatment of the queer intimacy it establishes. Coming after a discussion of sexual history and sexual fantasy, Marlo reveals to Tully that she has a waitress’s uniform that she’s never used, bought to surprise her husband. As Tully puts the outfit on, which fits her pre-natal body in a way it wouldn’t Marlo, the moment of sexual possibility between the women is subsumed into heteronormative, ageist fantasy: Tully’s young, and therefore fantasy-appropriate, body is used as bait to ‘recharge’ the masculine battery.
ellauri112.html on line 729: The revelation that Tully is a version of Marlo’s former self removes the possibility of a different life she represented. “I love us,” Marlo’s husband says to her, as she lies in her hospital bed. “I love us too,” she replies. This collective noun is the acceptance of the status quo, just as Tully’s last speech, in which she tells Marlo she should embrace her dull life – “being boring means you’re doing it right” – is an endorsement of the sacrifices society requires of her. The final scene, in which Marlo’s husband helps her make the packed lunches, is bathed in a saccharine glow: learn to love your claustrophobia, it tells women. The nuclear family is the only one worth having.
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