Leslie has reached that point in her alcoholism where she has no more bleeps to give. She knows she’s a drunk and she knows YOU know she’s a drunk, and you can deal with it or not, because she’s too busy telling the bartender she needs a refill. She’s loud and she’s having trouble putting together a coherent sentence and her lipstick is smeared and there’s a legit chance she’ll fall over right in the middle of dancing to that country song — and when she wakes up tomorrow morning feeling like a cartoon character who’s been smashed in the head with an anvil, she’ll spend the day shaking off the pain so she can spend the night doing it all over again.
The British actress Andrea Riseborough plays the title character in Michael Morris’ miniature masterpiece “To Leslie,” and her richly layered, utterly authentic and heartbreakingly effective performance ranks with the work of Jack Lemmon and Lee Remick in “Days of Wine and Roses,” Nicolas Cage in “Leaving Las Vegas” and Jeff Bridges in “Crazy Heart.” With director Morris filming “To Leslie” in beautiful and stark 35mm that gives the present-day, Texas setting a 1970s vibe, and screenwriter Ryan Binaco providing some of the most genuine and quietly powerful dialogue in any movie this year, Riseborough hits a wide range of notes, from the most subtle of expressions to the loudest of explosions, and never misses the mark. We believe every day, every hour, every moment of Leslie’s life — and it has not been an easy road.
In a short but telling prologue, we see Leslie whooping it up after winning $190,000 in the Texas state lottery, and there’s something so intense and edgy about her celebration, in the way she screams, “DRINKS ARE ON ME!” that when the story picks up six years later, we’re not surprised to learn Leslie apparently never stopped buying all the drinks, mostly for herself. Broke and broken down, Leslie gets tossed out of the seedy motel where she’s been staying, and just when we think she’s hit rock bottom, she buries herself even deeper when goes to stay with her young son James (Owen Teague) and quickly breaks her promise not to drink.
James loves his mother even though she essentially abandoned him as a young teenager after she won the lottery, but he doesn’t have the strength to take care of her, so he sends Leslie back to their small hometown in West Texas, where Leslie’s estranged best friends Dutch (Stephen Root) and Nancy (Allison Janney) reluctantly take her in, only because they care about James. The hard-bitten, casually cruel Nancy doesn’t even try to hide her hostility toward Leslie, while the more even-keeled Dutch is willing to give her another chance but warns her, “No one’s taking your s--- a second time.”
Spoiler alert: Dutch wasn’t bluffing. After getting plastered one too many times, Leslie is literally locked out of Dutch and Nancy’s house, and now it’s just Leslie and her pink suitcase on the streets, or more specifically, the grounds of a modest motel on the outskirts of town, run by a couple of eccentric buddies called Sweeney (Marc Maron) and Royal (Andre Royo). Against his better judgment, Sweeney offers Leslie a job (“It pays 10 an hour — you know, let’s make it seven, seven an hour, room and board”), and the metaphor is obvious here: While cleaning up motel rooms, Leslie has what might be her last chance to clean up her own act.
Leslie and Sweeney enter into a beautifully awkward and halting friendship that could develop into something more, with Sweeney offering to share TV dinners with Leslie every night and keep her company so she won’t go out drinking. Gradually, naturally, we learn Sweeney’s backstory, and we find out why Nancy is filled with such rage at Leslie that she goes out of her way to be cruel to her. We’re also waiting for that moment when Leslie will fall off the wagon, and we’re hoping her son James resurfaces at some point.
Every character in “To Leslie” feels “lived-in.” Every scene rings true, sometimes in surprising ways. (Leslie has two encounters with handsome strangers at the local bar; neither goes the way you’d see it go in a lesser film.) The production design and cinematography perfectly match the tone of the film, and the music is perfect, from “Here I Am” by Dolly Parton to “Highwayman” by The Highwaymen to “I Don’t Need Your Rockin’ Chair” by George Jones to “Are You Sure” by Willie Nelson to a number of songs written and performed by Linda Perry. Leslie’s life is like a country & western ballad, and not in a good way. To be sure, Leslie is her own worst enemy, but she has a disease and there’s still time, maybe just enough time, for her to find the path to recovery. We hold deep hope for that redemption.
