To Leslie is the kind of perfectly fine film that’s a minor hit at South by Southwest, goes on to win maybe a few Independent Spirit Awards and then vanishes from recognition for all but the most ardent fans of either indie cinema or its particular lead actress. And there isn’t anything wrong with that, those kind of movies are good and useful -often great places for filmmakers and actors to stretch their capabilities in interesting ways. They don’t tend to stick around thought. But of course this one is an exception. Here I am covering it almost a year after it premiered to a modestly positive response at SXSW, for reasons both good and arguably bad for the movie’s publicity.
Andrea Riseborough’s out-of-left-field Oscar nomination for To Leslie is both a blessing and a curse for the scrappy indie movie from Michael Morris -his first feature film, though he’s been a prodigious and successful television director, and even one-time director of the Old Vic in London. Potentially thousands of new eyes are on the movie (including my own) that missed it on its initial, extremely limited theatrical release last fall; but at the same time it has quickly become overshadowed by the controversy of the Oscar nomination, the process by which it was attained, the major snubs it therefore created, and the humiliation it has caused the Academy. For a long time, To Leslie is going to be associated with that more than anything in the movie or even with regards to Riseborough’s performance -which is very good, perhaps a career-best for her so far.
And it’s not like you can’t see the movie being a proper Oscar contender: it’s an inspirational story centred around a transformative performance, and had it not been made on a shoestring budget with maybe a studio division and greater promotion behind it (and if the character of Leslie was based on a real person -that’s important), it probably would have been on the Oscar radar without Morris, his wife Mary McCormack, and Riseborough having to mount the grassroots effort themselves. Back in the 80s it would have been the kind of movie Meryl Streep would make and get an automatic Oscar nomination for. That doesn’t mean that it’s particularly great though.
It is the story of Leslie, a working class West Texan woman who won a $190,000 lottery that she subsequently squandered on booze and drugs, and is now living impoverished and dependent while still deep in addiction. After a residence kicks her out, she tries staying with various family, only to betray their trusts enough that she falls back into homelessness. Only the generosity and job offer of a motel owner Sweeney (Marc Maron) is enough to start her on the path out of self-destruction.
Riseborough is definitely the lynchpin of the movie, her performance a raw portrait of poverty and addiction that feels honest without tripping into hyperbole. As someone who has had to interact with the houseless, with folks struggling in addiction, you can tell she did research and understands the mind and motivation of this unfortunate woman. And it’s a psychology that isn’t entirely relatable -that is stubborn and cruel as well as pitiable. She also taps in very well to the shortsighted self-preservation instincts and manipulative streak that someone in such a circumstance might adopt as a way of getting by. For a chunk of the movie you don’t know that a redemption can ever come because of how nonchalantly she’ll burn bridges. Yet Riseborough is so adept at unlocking Leslie’s humanity -those things she truly does care about that it’s easy to stay engaged with her even through the hiding alcohol in her son’s apartment or the callous lateness in the first few weeks of her job.
Yet around this the movie is fairly plainly written. Though the initial conceit is compelling, a potent comment on class and wealth psychologies that I suspect reflects the reality for more than a few lottery winners suddenly faced with a fortune they’re ill-prepared to handle, it doesn’t much get into that in favour of playing out a more standard feel-good drama. And it handles the material of that fairly well, Morris’ experience behind the camera shows through; but the plot and dynamics don’t go to any unique or terribly enlightening places. It features the standard devices of the act of kindness combined with a humbling self-reflection motivating the major change, adversarial characters rendered a bit extremely to cultivate empathy with the protagonist (Alison Janney’s mother-in-law goes extra steps towards being cruel to Leslie), and the resolution that indicates an unwavering sense of stability, growth, and hope. There’s also a touch of the romantic to Leslie’s relationship with Sweeney that probably most feels out of place and like the movie is working off of a checklist.
As the story plays through these it is competent -even amiable in places: I really liked the sequence at the fair for instance, until a posse of assholes led by Janney’s character had to come and harass the living hell out of Leslie. Likewise the sequence where Sweeney shows Leslie the old footage of her being interviewed after winning the lottery does an excellent job accentuating the trauma such a memory has for her, only to be followed by the dumbness of Sweeney invalidating that trauma for the sake of a cheap ‘break-up’ between the characters. You can see a movie inside this one that is more intrepid and interesting, but Morris doesn’t allow it to come to the surface. Usually, such a thing might be limited by details of biography, but this is a wholly fictional story. You’d think they would take advantage of that freedom.
The mood and sense of place is established really well: everything in Leslie’s life from the bars to the motel to even the room she is put up in briefly at her son’s apartment is dingy and downtrodden, reflective of her own apathetic sense of self. The disenfranchisement of her peers is also noteworthy -a reminder of how valuable that fortune she wasted was. There is a bit of redneck patronizing going on -I suspect few people involved with the movie have experience living at the poverty line in rural Texas, and aspects of the movie don’t feel quite believable for that. It’s certainly missing some real “indie cred” for as much as it may dress in its clothes -something which definitely shows through now in the wake of its grassroots Oscar success.
Still, Riseborough shoulders the movie’s weaknesses and keeps them on the periphery. To Leslie really is her movie more than anything and she earns at least some of the acclaim she’s been receiving. And if you’re into conventional inspiring character dramas that at least know to avoid the most egregious of Hollywood tropes -including to some degree in the ending, this is a movie worth looking at. And hey, maybe the stunt will inspire the Academy to look in the future to better indie films for recognition. So many deserve to follow in To Leslie’s footsteps.
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