A Kiwi comedy truly unlike anything ever seen or heard - in New Zealand and beyond - Nude Tuesday is a fearlessly uproarious film admirably committed to its own particular kind of strangeness.
Lead actor Jackie van Beek (co-writer, co-director and co-star – all with Madeleine Sami - of the last great Kiwi comedy, 2018's The Breaker Upperers) conceived the unique project with its director, Armagan Ballantyne (The Strength of Water). Set in a fictional country, the entire movie plays out in gibberish - all the actors spout vaguely Scandinavian-sounding words with English subtitles (written by stellar British comedian/actor Julia Davis) revealing what they're saying.
Van Beek stars as Laura, whose marriage to Bruno (Aussie journeyman actor Damon Herriman – who played Charles Manson in both Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood and the second season of Mindhunter) has seen better days. At a grim family dinner marking their wedding anniversary, Bruno's mother gifts them a trip to a relationship retreat at a rural lodge.
Although hesitant, they resolve to embrace the opportunity but struggle with the retreat's relentlessly horny guru Bjorg (Kiwi comedy royalty Jemaine Clement) and the expectation that they will disrobe on the titular day for a naked trek up a snow-capped mountain. The not-so-underlying tension in their marriage is forced to the fore as the couple steps way outside their comfort zone.
The ambitious language gambit is strangely successful – the utterances never feel entirely random, and there is a primal, almost childlike humour to be derived from the odd noises emanating from the actors' mouths. Juxtaposed with Davis' brash subtitles (which she wrote with no knowledge of the intended dialogue), it adds a whole layer of comedy to something that was already pretty funny.