Cody’s characters are growing up along with her; she actually wrote "Tully” after having a third child of her own, and the fact that this is such a personal story shines through from the very beginning. It’s at once intimately detailed and narratively ambitious. And it’s surprisingly profound, sneaking up on you with understated yet wholly earned emotion by the end.
Having Charlize Theron at the center once again gives “Tully” so much of its power. As she showed playing the stunted prom queen of “Young Adult,” Theron isn’t afraid to be unlikable, to get messy. Here, she visits deep, dark places within the female psyche as well as the sanctity of suburbia, and her every moment on screen (which is pretty much every minute of the film) vibrates with hilarious, brutal honesty.
We actually see her belly before we even see her. Theron’s Marlo is days away from giving birth to her third child—which wasn’t exactly planned at age 40—and she’s about to pop. She already has an 8-year-old daughter, the sweetly insecure Sarah (Lia Frankland), and a 6-year-old son named Jonah (Asher Miles Fallica), who’s somewhere on the autism spectrum and on the verge of being kicked out of kindergarten. Her husband, Drew (an appropriately low-key Ron Livingston), means well, but he often travels for work and doesn’t really understand what it takes to keep the household functioning on a daily basis.
Whatever delicate balance they’d achieved gets obliterated with the arrival of baby Mia. The subtle look on Marlo’s face once she’s given birth isn’t one of euphoria or even exhausted pride. It’s something closer to detached anxiety: Change is coming, and she knows she needs to deal with it, but she’s just not ready.
Enter Tully (Mackenzie Davis), the night nurse Marlo’s wealthy, smug brother (Mark Duplass) has offered to hire as a gift to her. At first, Marlo is offended at the suggestion that she can’t mother her children on her own, but she gives in once the delirium of sleep deprivation takes its toll. “Tully” vividly and efficiently depicts the isolating nature of those early days at home with an infant: a never-ending cycle of feeding and pumping, crying and diaper changing, when you can’t recall at the end whether you’ve set foot in the outside world, much less showered or brushed your teeth. Marlo has two other kids who need attention, too, and she finally acknowledges that she could use some help.
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