Tully (M). Director: Jason Reitman. Starring: Charlize Theron, Mackenzie Davis, Ron Livingston, Mark Duplass, Elaine Tan. 96 minutes
Various analyses of the 2016 Census data pointed out that in Australia, women remain disadvantaged by the amount of unpaid domestic housework they do. Reported the Conversation in April 2017, 'the typical Australian woman spends between five and 14 hours a week doing unpaid domestic housework', compared with less than five hours for the typical Australian man. 'These gender gaps linger over time and widen even further when children enter the picture.'
When it comes to the unpaid labour of caring for children, Tully makes no bones about the 'labour' part. In its opening sequence, Marlo (Theron) spends countless minutes on a daily ritual, systematically brushing the skin of her son Jonah (Asher Miles Fallica). Jonah, described frequently by family outsiders as 'quirky', has a number of behavioural problems related to oversensitivity to external stimuli, and a therapist has expressed the hope that this routine will help to soothe him.
As the film commences, Marlo is heavily pregnant, and lately on maternity leave. Her household is divided along conventional gender lines; her husband Drew (Livingston) is the 'breadwinner' and is frequently away for work, leaving Marlo with the lion's share of looking after the household and their two children. There are hints that after Jonah's birth Marlo had suffered from post-natal depression; the occasional distant expression on her face suggests that it never quite left her (Theron does a masterful job of tapping into the character's troubled depths).
Once their third child, Mia, is born, 'labour' takes on a whole new meaning. A montage portrays Marlo's daily life as a looping sequence of tasks that are exhausting in their repetitiveness and mundaneness. It culminates with the sight of her sitting at the dinner table with her children, looking harried and drained. When Drew arrives home from work, his first act is to chastise her for allowing the children to use their 'screens' while eating dinner.
He doesn't mean it as an attack, any more than her daughter intends to insult her when moments later she asks the until-recently pregnant Marlo incredulously, 'What happened to your body?' But Marlo is by this point nothing if not thick-skinned; we've seen her negotiate all manner of indignities, from a stranger's disapproval at her drinking a decaf latte while pregnant, to the well-meaning but condescending principal of Jonah's school wondering if