Mark Reviews Movies: TO LESLIE

To Leslie, Momentum Pictures

Follow on Facebook | Follow on Twitter | Become a Patron

Review by Mark Dujsik | October 6, 2022

The story of To Leslie is the simple but depressing one of a woman staying in one place as long as she can. She drinks, though, and that means Leslie (Andrea Riseborough) has difficulty finding or maintaining a job, keeping any cash on hand, and staying on the good side of the people around her wherever she may be. When the easy goings and people's patience run dry in one place, she's off to another, where the cycle inevitably continues.

That's about half or so of this film, written by Ryan Binaco and directed by Michael Morris with sense of plain, everyday ruin for Leslie. She has reasons or excuses, depending on the perspective of people who know or come into contact with her, as well as how long or often she has pulled the same behavior with that person. She can't help it, Leslie says. She's sick. She has an addiction.

All of this is true, but at a certain point, those rationales and justifications don't mean anything to the people who know too well what that means for her and, if they let her continue her ways in the vicinity, for them. Leslie is initially kicked out of the motel where she has been living, because she can't or won't pay the rent. That gets her on a bus to stay with her 19-year-old son James (Owen Teague), who only has one rule for his mother: She's not allowed to drink as long as she stays.

That seems to be the setup for this story, but one of the reasons Binaco's screenplay feels honest is that it isn't. Leslie breaks that rule as soon as she has the chance, and after breaking some other unspoken ones, she's heading back home to stay with Dutch (Stephen Root) and Nancy (Allison Janney) in her hometown. The place brings back memories—none of them good—such as how she blew almost $200,000 in lottery winnings in a drunken stupor.

There's a stopping point to Leslie's roaming: at a motel in town run by Sweeney (Marc Maron, convincing enough as a foundationally decent person that we might forget the character becomes a one-dimensional savior) and Royal (Andre Royo). The film becomes far more sentimental and optimistic here, as Sweeney keeps giving Leslie more chances than she has had in a while, but the filmmakers and Riseborough have earned it for this character. Both the narrative and the actor's performance so solidly establish the tragic cycles of addiction and self-loathing that, as unlikely as it may seem from the early stages of this story, we want better for Leslie.

The film's success really is that straightforward. While To Leslie does eventually simplify a lot of things—the process of rehabilitation, the bond that develops between Leslie and Sweeney, the variously fraught relationships with family and friends—in this story, there's a lot of authentic pain and hard work to reach that point.

Back to Home

Buy Related Products