Filmed over the course of a year – once a week, every week – only on Tuesdays, 52 Tuesdays explores a modern world in a moving and provocative way, presenting an unknown cast whose subtle changes over a year challenge expectations of time and transformation.
Teenager Billie thinks she knows everything about her mother but is surprised to learn of mum’s plan to transition from woman to man. On top of this there’s also the upsetting parental decision that Billie will live with her dad full time for a year.
Mother and daughter make a promise to meet every week, every Tuesday, during the year. Their time together is spent adjusting to their friendly but distant relationship and so Billie seeks connections elsewhere.
Taking advantage of the increasing disconnection between her family members, Billie begins an unusual friendship with two older school kids where she gets to try the one thing she can’t work out: sex. As Billie starts to mirror her mother’s increasingly inaccessible life she discovers secrets are both a burden and a necessity to getting what you want.
Not only her directorial debut, this extraordinary new Australian feature from Sophie Hyde is a one of a kind film. The fascinating aspect of this intimate story is also the unique form representing the chronology of the story, as it was shot every Tuesday for 52 consecutive weeks.
The filmmakers had set themselves the same rule, that they could only shoot on Tuesdays up until midnight and only consecutively, so whatever filmed on that day is what happens in the story on that day.
The writers, Matthew Cormack and Sophie Hyde, created the structure first before they decided on character and story. Led by the very real performances of the collaborators playing the mother, “James” (Del Herbert-Jane) and teenage daughter “Billie” (Tilda Cobham-Hervey), the actors – all non-professional were given the script one week at a time and only given the scenes that they were in.
Following its world premiere screening at the Adelaide Film Festival last year, director Sophie Hyde went on to win the prestigious best directing award (in world cinema dramatic) at the recent at the Sundance Film Festival.
52 Tuesdays will screen as part of the Melbourne Queer Film Festival on Tuesday 18 March at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image. It is due to be released nationally in May 2014. For more information, visit: www.mqff.com.au for details.
Image: courtesy of Closer Productions