To Leslie

It's a shame that just about every conversation about To Leslie from here until eternity will be about the...interesting marketing tactics used to secure Andrea Riseborough a Best Actress Oscar nomination for her performance. It's tough to even talk about the movie at all without at least addressing the controversy, because I doubt most people (myself included) would have even heard of this no-budget project from a debut director (Michael Morris) without all of the related chatter. So from a marketing perspective at least, mission accomplished. Whether we should care about what this kind of Oscar campaign means (or more importantly, who it ended up excluding) is a different and important conversation altogether.

As for the movie itself, it's really quite good. Riseborough plays Leslie, a single mother and alcoholic who wins $190,000 in a local lottery. By the time the opening credits are over, we are six years in the future and Leslie is getting kicked out of a crappy motel with all of her possessions in the world gathered into one pink suitcase. We never get more than extremely high-level details about what happened in those six years, but we quickly gather that Leslie made a series of extremely bad life choices, including the abandonment of her then-13-year-old son James.

A character study of a person like Leslie who is at a destructive rock bottom will live and die by its ability to make the viewer still feel empathy. And it sure takes a while to warm up to Leslie, as we first see her reconnect with her son only to immediately get drunk and steal money from his roommate. She bounces around between family members who are extremely reluctant to give her another chance, and with each scene you wonder how much lower Leslie can possibly get. It's not until about three quarters of the way through the movie that you start to feel like she might ever turn things around even a little bit.

So it's a testament to the story, and especially Riseborough's performance, that you're willing to keep going along with all of this. Leslie is a complete car wreck with all of the accompanying sadness and self-loathing, and it's amazing how easily Riseborough conveys all of that turmoil just by looking at the ground or sheepishly avoiding eye contact during a conversation. When she's required to crank things up into rage screaming or drunkenly lashing out, she does so with aplomb, but the real power and source of viewer connection comes from the moments of quieter anguish and regret. The movie's standout sequence happens as Leslie sits alone in a closing bar as a song played during last call seems to speak directly to her, asking her if she's happy with where she is, as she slowly switches from bemusement to genuine pain.

As good as Riseborough is, it's an additional shame that Marc Maron isn't getting more attention for his performance as the benevolent Sweeney, who helps run a local motel and somewhat inexplicably gives Leslie her second (third, fourth and fifth) chance. He's partnered at the motel with the quirky Royal (Andre Royo, or Bubbles from The Wire), and all of the interactions about the motel are a delight.

So while the debate rages on about whether Riseborough deserves her Oscar nomination, I don't think you'll find many who would say that she is any less than fantastic regardless, and the movie itself is a simple, effortlessly touching, they-don't-make-'em-like-this-anymore character study that is worthy of a larger audience.