Mackenzie Davis Is the Queen of the Metaphysical Threeway Scene

At the outset, you wouldn’t expect Tully — the 2018 indie about an overwhelmed mother of three (Charlize Theron) who takes on a night nanny (Mackenzie Davis) to help her manage her harried life — to have very much in common with Blade Runner 2049, the sleek, futuristic sequel about synthetic people and holograms and misty, blasted-out planets. And they don’t, really, except for the fact that Mackenzie Davis stars in both of them, and that in both, her character takes part in a most unusual threeway sex scene.

Honestly? It’s a nice niche if you can get it.

But seriously, within the same 12-month span, Davis — whose other acclaimed roles have included TV’s Halt and Catch Fire and Black Mirror — began by taking part in the technological marvel that was the Blade Runner 2049 love scene. In it, Ryan Gosling’s replicant-hunting “K” returns to his spartan high-rise apartment and his holographic lady-friend Joi (Ana de Armas). Joi isn’t real, strictly speaking, but she’s real enough for K, who has genuine feelings for her. Still, she has no physical presence. Enter Mackenzie Davis as Mariette, a replicant resistance member and prostitute hired by Joi to be the physical presence in the room so she and K can have sex. When it comes time, Joi overlays her hologram onto Mariette’s very real body, and they both begin to caress K in near-unison. It’s a beautiful and unsettling image that represents a dazzling technological achievement.

As for Tully… well, first of all

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SPOILERS AHEAD for the ending of Tully

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So when Mackenzie Davis shows up as Tully on the doorstep of Marlo, just as Marlo is at the end of her rope with motherhood. Marlo has a hushed-and-whispered history of post-partum depression, and she’s also not getting a ton of help from her oblivious husband, Drew (Ron Livingston). Tully ends us becoming a cross between a fun little sister, a smart co-parent, and Mary Poppins (she cooks! she cleans!), and ultimately, the care and feeding of that baby get taken care of. But then there’s the matter of Marlo herself. Even at optimal motherhood, she’s still got to work at starting to feel like herself again. Unsurprisingly, Tully is there to help with that as well. Donning a ’50s-style waitress uniform (Drew has a thing for it), Tully takes the lead and pulls Marlo and Drew into a therapeutic and necessary threesome.

 

Which… actually isn’t that metaphysical. It’s just a threesome. Or it is until the final twist of Tully is revealed: that Tully herself never existed. She’s a projection of Marlo’s younger self (her middle name is Tully), a kind of cry into the void from Marlo that she needed the woman she was to help the woman she is. She needed a reminder that that beautiful, fun, capable girl/woman/mother was still in there. And thus, that pretty ordinary threesome is now re-interpreted as a threeway between Drew, Marlo, and Marlo’s younger self. Lucky Drew, in any case.

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END SPOILERS

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With or without the metaphysical love scenes to her credit, Mackenzie Davis is one of the most vital and exciting young actresses working today. But also, on top of all of that: if you’re a movie that’s working on a sex scene with two people who are there and one person who is both there and not there at the same time … she’s really good at it.

Where to stream Tully