When the Oscar roll was called up yonder, in the Best Actress category, many shared a common response: “yes, we know most of these candidates, having been inundated with Oscar buzz for weeks, but who is this Andrea Riseborough person, and who has heard of/watched the film To Leslie?” On that very subject, controversy was abuzz around the allegation the actress’ champions — including high-powered stars — had lobbied the Academy to get her onto the coveted list, while bypassing the usual machinery of expensive advertising and promotion campaigns (which includes festival tribute stops such as we see annually through the Santa Barbara International Film Festival).
All of that peripheral falderal and catty banter aside, the main takeaway is that through this quirk of the system many are being led to watch an indie sleeper of a film well worth watching — mostly thanks to British actress Riseborough’s stunning performance in the lead, anti-heroine role. Her balance of control and abandon is on an order of artfulness rarely seen on-screen, the stuff Best Actress Oscars are made of.
In writer-director Michael Morris’s moving and cathartic film, based loosely on a true story, Riseborough plays an alcoholic mother in West Texas, whose hefty lottery win in the intro quickly yields to years later, when her life has come undone, along with her relationship with her long-suffering son. In short, Riseborough’s performance is the finest portrayal of the soggy fatalism and sinking fate of an alcoholic since Nicolas Cage in Leaving Las Vegas, except that (semi-spoiler alert) she doesn’t succumb completely and “leave” town in that mortal last call sense.