52 Tuesdays Reviews

Much like Boyhood, 52 Tuesdays employed an unconventional production method in order to tell this story about the year in life of a teenage girl and her parent’s transition. While the story tends to shrink away from some of the more delicate and richer story possibilities, there’s still a lot to admire and work with here.

Director Sophie Hyde decided that she would only shoot the film on Tuesdays for a year, hence the title. It’s ambitious and prone to moments of striking change where we realize just how much the characters have changed physically and emotionally over the course of the film. It’s subtle in the best of ways, but Hyde also appears afraid to really dig deep into how a parent’s transition would affect someone emotionally. There’s a lot of talk and focus on the physicality of the transformation and very little attention paid to the interior changes.

Part of this is just how solely the film focuses in on Billie, our teenage narrator and guide. Her persistent video diaries and tendency towards filming everything, including sexual explorations with two older students from her school, mean we track her growth over the year in minute detail. Where does that leave James, her parent? As something of an ever-changing sketch, always fluctuating in relation to how Billie perceives him and his changes, and removed as a voice.

52 Tuesdays could play more like a gimmick if it weren’t for the wonderful lead performances. Tilda Cobham-Hervey as Billie is a knockout, as she is allowed a full range of emotions and interior thoughts that American teenagers are not seemingly scared or incapable of expressing in film. She’s not always likable, and prone to bouts of selfish brattiness and uncaring tantrums but these moments only reflect a deeper truth. Who wasn’t frequently like that as a teenager?

In the end the elliptical nature of 52 Tuesdays is forgiven for how real and complicated it allows its characters and situations to be, even if it doesn’t dig as deep or quite where it should. As a calling card goes, Hyde has done herself proud with this one. It’s compelling and small in such enthralling ways that I can’t help but hope it’s the beginning of a new talent.