Richard Cotter

TO LESLIE: DARK HORSEY PUNT

There’s a couple of dark horsey punts in this year’s Oscar race for Best Lead Actress.

Ana de Armas in BLONDE which went straight to streaming service, Netflix, and created some controversy regarding her depiction of Marilyn Monroe and Andrea Riseborough in TO LESLIE which created a storm when her nomination came under rules scrutiny. Rules? Surely the only rules that count is that exhibition means eligibility and that a great performance should be considered.

And Riseborough ticks those boxes. End of story.

In TO LESLIE, Andrea Riseborough is a West Texas single mother who at the beginning of the film wins the lottery and a chance at a good life.

Fast forward a few short years, the money is gone, pissed away in alcoholic haze and Leslie is on her own, living hard and fast at the bottom of a bottle as she runs from the world of heartbreak she left behind.

A reconciliation with her son is railroaded by her addiction and with her charm running out and nowhere to go, Leslie is forced to return home to her former friends Nancy and Dutch. Terrific performances here, too, by Allison Janney and Stephen Root.

Unwelcome and unwanted by those she wronged, it’s a lonely motel clerk named Sweeney, a gorgeously empathetic performance by Marc Maron, who takes a chance when no one else will. With his support, Leslie comes face to face with the consequences of her actions, a life of regret, and a second chance to make a good life for her and a reconciliation with her son that sticks.

Written by Ryan Binaco and directed by Michael Morris, TO LESLIE is dark and dire, crushing and cathartic, an unflinching portrait of alcohol abuse that is both shocking and curiously exhilarating, beautiful and horrifying, squalid and redemptive.

Oscar isn’t adverse to bestowing the Award to alcoholic characters – Ray Milland in Lost Weekend, Nicholas Cage in Leaving Las Vegas, Robert Duvall in Tender Mercies, Jeff Bridges in Crazy Heart. Riseborough is every bit as gin soaked, whisky ravaged, beer addled as those performances, so cheers to her nomination and unlikely success.