‘To Leslie’ (2022) Review: Riseborough’s Career Best Performance is Deeply Fearless
Michael Morris’ To Leslie shows the power of empathy. The movie follows Leslie’s (Andrea Riseborough) troubled life, as she battles addiction and loneliness. After winning the lottery, she hoped that the money would change her life. But six years after her big win, she’s getting evicted from the motel and completely loses herself. To Leslie is a movie that follows a powerful and emotionally vulnerable redemption arc; the movie doesn’t try to gloss over any of Leslie’s wrongdoings but shows her actions with honesty and total transparency.
The movie begins with a sharp and brief prologue. Leslie wins $190,000 in a lottery. She’s happy and it’s enough to make a difference for a working-class single mother in West Texas. But six years later, Leslie drains all of her money and gets evicted from her home. With nowhere to turn to, she travels to see her estranged son, James (Owen Teague), who is clearly uncomfortable having his mother around his home. He has only two rules, Leslie can’t stay with him forever and two, no drinking. It doesn’t take long for Leslie to steal money from his roommate and buy alcohol from the store. When James finds the bottle hidden under her mattress, he kicks him out and she is forced to return back home to West Texas. At the request of James, she stays at her former best friend’s home, Dutch (Stephen Root) and Nancy (Allison Janney). But their rules are far more difficult than James’ and she ends up getting kicked out again. Soon enough, she quickly runs out of options and finds herself on a journey to get sober.
The reason why To Leslie is so emotionally driven is due to Riseborough’s performance. Everything about her portrayal is fearless. She plays a complex character with deep emotional issues and substance problems, while also portraying the role with confidence. She doesn’t try to pander to the audience, but rather tries to deliver an emotional and heartbreaking performance that shows how alcoholism, guilt, and loneliness can have terrible consequences for a person’s life.
The biggest mystery that surrounds the script of To Leslie is, what did the central protagonist do with all the money? Surely, she could have supported her son and sent him off to college, or opened the diner that she has always wanted to open. Ryan Binaco, who wrote the screenplay, avoids revealing the mysterious catastrophe in Leslie’s life and why James and her best friends have been angry with her for decades. As the movie progresses, the audience finds out why Leslie loses all of her money and what happened to her relationship with her only son. Every decision she has ever made in her life has been fraught with trouble after trouble, and the consequences have been dire. Even though Leslie’s redemption arc is predictable, the character development is one of the best and most well-developed endings. It makes a perfect ending when the movie is emotionally moving.
To Leslie has a flawed protagonist, who later understands the damage she has done to everyone around her. The movie doesn’t try to conclude that Leslie’s actions are forgiven, rather it is left for the audience to make the conclusion. The screenplay is deeply vulnerable and provides a backstory of the events by revealing them slowly. Riseborough’s performance cannot be overstated. Every aspect of her performance contributes to the screenplay’s emotional ending. To Leslie begins at Leslie’s darker and concludes with an ending that aims to place her in a much happier place. The character with rough edges ends up feeling reinvigorated with a new sense of purpose in life.
