Nude Tuesday

Tribeca Online Premieres

Online World Premiere

FEATURE | New Zealand, Australia | 100 MINUTES | Gibberish | English subtitles

NUDE TUESDAY

Comedy

The married life has gone stale for Laura (Jackie van Beek) and Bruno (Damon Herriman). Living with their two young daughters, the middle-aged couple are in a romantic and sexual rut, with Laura’s professional stresses complicating everything at home and Bruno’s ineffectiveness as a husband leaving him bitter and volatile. Leave it to Bruno’s free-spirited mom to present a possible fix, though: She’s sending them to a couple’s retreat meant to get a couple’s sexual urges back up and running. Reluctantly, Laura and Bruno accept the offer and check into the woodland resort overseen by an eccentric and awkwardly forward guru (Jemaine Clement).

Or at least that’s the gist of the plot, from what we can tell. The characters in the inventive and subversive Nude Tuesday speak in a totally made-up language, with their dialogue being imagined, so to speak, by English comedian Julia Davis. In a wild and audacious creative gambit, Kiwi filmmaker Armagan Ballantyne and writer/co-star van Beek have engineered a playful and delightfully odd melding of Mad-Libs-like raucousness and a fascinating look at the universality of character-first storytelling. It’s an unruly yet still heartfelt and crowd-endearing comedy whose high-wire-act execution charms with ease. —Matt Barone


CAST & CREDITS

Directed by Armağan Ballantyne

Born in Aotearoa, New Zealand, Armağan Ballantyne’s short films screened in Venice, Telluride, Berlin and New York Film Festivals. She attended the Sundance Lab, with her debut feature The Strength of Water which screened in competition at the Berlinale, Rotterdam Film Festival and the Asia Pacific Screen Awards.
Director
Armağan Ballantyne
Subtitles Writer
Julia Davis
Producer
Emma Slade, Virginia Whitwell, Nick Batzias
Screenwriter
Jackie van Beek
Cinematographer
Andrew Commis
Composer
Cam Ballantyne
Editor
Nick Meyers
Executive Producer
Alison Thompson, Mark Gooder, Paul Weigard
Cast
Jackie van Beek, Damon Herriman, Jemaine Clement

CONTACTS

US Sales Contact
Mark Gooder
Cornerstone Films
London, SE11 4UF
Phone: 02034577257
office@cornerstonefilm.com
Press Contact
Anna Bohlin
Cornerstone
London, SE11 4UF
Phone: 0046 76 326 05 78
ab@cornerstonefilm.com
Publicist
Karen Oberman
K.O. PR
Phone: 310-623-2061
karen.oberman@ko-pr.com