I just finished watching the movie To Leslie, a movie directed by Michael Morris and starring English actress Andrea Riseborough as Leslie, a divorced alcoholic woman who lives in rural Texas and is estranged from her son, James. She is living through poverty and homelessness and struggling to make her way through the struggles of life. I didn't know much about the film before I saw it, I just kept reading the news that its nomination for the Oscars last year created a serious stir of controversy because there was a grassroots campaign for the film that it seems violated the rules for Oscar nominations, and also that it wasn't fair that Andrea Riseborough, who is white, got nominated while Black actresses like Viola Davis and Danielle Deadwyler didn't get nominated for their performances. I am not going to pretend like this part of the controversy isn't important because Hollywood has a very long history of racism and even with a greater diversity of stories from directors who are Black, Indigenous, Latinx, and Asian, Hollywood and the Academy I am sure still have a long way to go in addressing issues of diversity. I haven't read enough about the controversy to form an articulate, well-formed opinion about it, but that was how I first heard about the movie was because of the news surrounding its nomination.
The movie, To Leslie, takes place in rural west Texas. At the beginning they show pictures of Leslie, from her childhood to her teenage years to the birth of her son James, to that moment when she won the lottery. One significant moment in that montage shows her bruised eye up close, and it implies that her marriage was an abusive marriage and that her husband was abusive towards her. The song "Here I Am" by Dolly Parton is playing during the montage of photos. There is footage of Leslie on television when she won the lottery and she is screaming and cheering in excitement while her son, James, looks quiet and subdued and uncomfortable to be on national television. Six years later, Leslie is curled up in a motel by herself and a man pounds on the door, telling her she needs to leave. She gathers her belongings and cusses out the manager and everyone at the motel, and leaves. She contacts her son, James, who she hasn't spoken to in years, and he reluctantly allows her to stay with him. He gives her a condition though: no drinking. He lets her stay long enough so she can figure out a plan for what to do with her life. Leslie promises to not drink like she used to, but when James is at work, she goes through his drawers to look for cash so she can get alcohol. At first, things seem to be okay, and one night Leslie is smoking a joint with James and his coworker at the construction site, Darren. Darren informs James that something happened to Leslie, and James comes home to find empty liquor bottles under his mattress. When James finds out that his neighbor allowed Leslie to come over to his apartment and get alcohol from him, he beats the guy up and then screams at his mom for breaking the rules and drinking when he told her not to.
He threatens to contact Dutch and Nancy, two people in their Texas town who don't like Leslie, and he has Leslie stay with them. Dutch and Nancy let Leslie stay with them, but they aren't happy about it because Leslie left her son and wasted her lottery money. Dutch tells her she needs to stay and help with painting and household chores and needs to stop drinking. Leslie promises to work, but then she goes out to bars and drinks heavily. She is lonely and feels ostracized by the people in her life, and there is one scene where Dutch and Nancy are drinking around a campfire and everyone is talking trash about Leslie, but Leslie is cooped up alone in the house because everyone is gossiping loudly about her drinking and her past. She overhears Dutch and Nancy loudly fighting about Leslie's alcoholism and her fraught relationship with her son. When she goes to a bar, she flirts with a man at the bar who is talking with a buddy of his. She is trying to get a conversation going and asks him to dance, but he is uncomfortable with her being drunk and rejects her advances, leaving her to dance alone. She also finds out from the bar owner that the picture they had of her winning the lottery was taken down, and so she leaves and gives the guy the finger. When she comes back to Dutch and Nancy's place, they have locked the front door so that she cannot get in and they left her suitcase on the porch. She leaves and has to go find another place to stay. Pete, Dutch and Nancy's friend, offers her a ride and buys her dinner. While she is eating in the car, he makes a crack about her drinking and tries to make sexual advances towards her, and she runs out of the car and leaves. She happens upon a motel and sleeps outside the motel. Sweeney, the motel manager (Marc Maron) kicks her off the premises, and Leslie goes. However, she leaves her suitcase behind, and Sweeney and his coworker, Royal (Andre Royo) go through the suitcase and figure out whether they should even bother giving it back to her now that she is gone. However, she comes back looking for the suitcase and Sweeney offers her a job at the motel. At first, Leslie doesn't seem to show much promise. She sleeps in and shows up late, and she smokes and drinks frequently while working. Royal and Sweeney are frustrated with her, but they don't give up on her. In fact, they are literally the only people who have not given up on her. All of Leslie's friends have deserted her and her son kicked her out, so she doesn't have a lot of people to talk with. Leslie goes to the bar and reflects on how she is living her life, and she also visits the old house that she and James used to live in. It is inhabited by a new family, and when she comes in, the husband who lives in the house is uncomfortable with her being there and she reminisces about the days when she would cook and clean in the house and how comfortable and nice her life was in it.
Sweeney finds Leslie and picks her up and takes her back to the motel, and Leslie resolves to quit drinking cold-turkey. This is incredibly difficult and she suffers from withdrawal. She vomits frequently and while eating dinner with Sweeney, her hands and body shake and she cannot keep her food down. However, she is determined to go through with her recovery. Sweeney opens up about his personal life to Leslie and doesn't prod her about her alcoholism, and he tells her that he has a daughter and a granddaughter, and that he left his wife because she was an alcoholic. He apologizes for wanting to know personal details about her drinking and invites her to a party that the whole Texas town is going to be at. When Leslie hears that everyone in the town is going to be there, she declines but Sweeney insists on her going. She goes and at first she is having fun, and she gets to play carnival games with Sweeney's daughter and his granddaughter, Bernice and Betsy. However, while Leslie and Royal are sitting and watching everyone dancing, Pete's kids run up to her and asks her if it's true that she really won the lottery. This brings up bad memories for Leslie, and Royal shoos them away when he finds out that they are Pete's kids and that Pete and Nancy has been gossiping to them about Leslie. Leslie confronts Nancy and Pete when Pete gets atop the table and announces in glee that he won the lottery. Leslie tells him that he isn't special just because he won the lottery and that he's going to waste all the money anyway, and Nancy takes several nasty jabs at Leslie's drinking and her leaving her son. Sweeney tries to break up the fight but Leslie decides to leave the gathering. Sweeney begs her to not go by herself, but Leslie refuses to stay and leaves.
Sweeney finds Leslie in her room and tells her he got a tape of old footage of her winning the lottery. He expects her to feel good about it and to regain her confidence, as a way to remind her that she is not the low life that Pete and Nancy made her out to be. However, watching the video makes Leslie feel ashamed, and she tells Sweeney to leave and cusses him out. She quits her job at the motel and leaves. She goes to a bar and a guy who finds her attractive goes up and starts talking to her, and she is suspicious about his motives and asks him if she really finds something in her or if he just sees her as a one stop shop. He backs off and tells her that she doesn't have to be interested in him, and she leaves the bar. Nancy and Pete come into the bar, and Sweeney is looking for Leslie, and Nancy and Pete make some snide comment about Leslie and Sweeney punches Pete, prompting the owner to break up the fight. The bartender threatens to throw out Pete and Nancy and the guy who fell in love with Leslie offers to beat them up. Leslie sleeps in a run down ice cream shop that Royal's dad used to own, and she peers through the window and finds Royal dancing and howling at the night sky and Sweeney comes over and they hug after not being able to find Leslie. The next day, Sweeney finds her and Leslie tells him that she wants to renovate the ice cream shop and make it a diner, but Sweeney thinks that it will be impossible because they don't have the finances to open up a diner. But Leslie is determined and then when she asks why Sweeney was so kind to her, Sweeney reveals it's because he has a crush on Leslie and they share a sweet kiss. Ten months later, Royal, Sweeney and Leslie have finished building Lee's Diner out of the ice cream shop, and they are anticipating many customers coming on opening day. However, as night falls, no one has come to the diner and Leslie gives up hope. However, she hears a knock at the door and finds Nancy arriving to dine at the restaurant. Leslie gets angry and pretends to serve Nancy, and Nancy tells her to cut the bullshit and angrily opens up about how Leslie fucked up when she left her son and made bad life choices and didn't take responsibility for them. Leslie is pained that Nancy is bringing up her past, but she ends up thanking her and Nancy brings in James to the restaurant. Leslie breaks down in tears and serves her son dinner, and when he expresses appreciation for the meal, she breaks down and gives him a hug because she has so many regrets about what she did and she just really wants to be a good mom.
This movie's themes reminded me of some other movies I have seen in the past. A couple of years ago, I watched a movie by A24 called The Florida Project, a film directed by Sean Baker, and it's about a single mom named Halley who is raising her six year old daughter, Moonee, in a motel in Kissimmee, Florida, which many tourists visit because Disney World is located close by. Moonee and her friends Jancey and Scooty seem to be enjoying their lives running around and getting ice cream and playing in parks with other kids whose parents live in the motel complex. But while watching the movie, I also saw how Halley and the other adults have to face the reality of poverty and struggling to get by, and how even though the tourists have this glamorous view of Disney World, it's not super glamorous because a lot of people in the local community struggle with poverty and other challenges. Halley also has strained relationship with her friend, who is Scooty's mom. Scooty's mom works at a diner, while Halley struggles to make ends meet after losing her job as a stripper. Halley's financal situation only gets worse as the film goes on, and she has to take up sex work again to make ends meet. Ashley is unhappy with what Halley is doing and Halley beats her up. The movie showed how no magical person was ever going to save the people from poverty and that everyone was a human being who was just trying to do their best to make ends meet and take care of their kids. Bobby, the motel manager (played by Willem Dafoe) is doing his best, too, to especially keep the kids at the motel from confronting the harsh realities that the adults have to face every day. There was one particular scene in the film that shows this, and it also stuck with me because it's a pretty hard scene to watch. The kids in the motel are playing in the park and a middle aged pedophile starts to approach the children. Bobby approaches the guy and gets him a soda and then kicks him off the premises so he doesn't mess with the kids again. It showed me how Bobby really cared about the residents at the motel and that he is willing to do anything to help them. However, he could only really do his best. He couldn't protect or shelter Moonee from the harsh realities of day to day life, and this is evident when agents from the Florida Department of Children and Families comes to take Moonee away from her mom after finding out that Halley was doing sex work, and Moonee goes with one of the other kids and escapes from the DCF agents. The film pulls no punches when it portrays the reality of poverty and trying to survive in a harsh world, but it also shows how the kids in the movie create value and meaning from these harsh realities. Leslie in To Leslie has big dreams of starting an ice cream shop but Sweeney wants her to be realistic about her expectations. But after the lottery winning thing fell flat and her relationships didn't work out, Leslie wants another shot at life and to do better, and opening the diner helped her start fresh.
To Leslie also shows the challenges of living with mental illness and addiction. In a pivotal scene towards the end of the film, Leslie takes a flask of alcohol from Royal's coat, and she sniffs the alcohol and is tempted to drink again, but she remembers the promise she made to herself and closes the bottle without drinking it. It was pretty painful watching the physical impact that withdrawal had on Leslie, but as someone who has listened to experiences of people who recover from addiction, I have learned that the process of recovery is not easy at all and when someone gets sober, it's a very major milestone for a lot of people. I haven't struggled with addiction, but I have struggled with mental illness and loneliness, and it can feel painful when you feel that you have to battle your suffering alone, and it can bring up a lot of feelings of guilt and shame. You know you should reach out for help, but that guilt and shame holds you back so you tell people you don't need help and suffer alone. I think that is why I had to see a mental health professional at some point because I could not face my anxiety and depression alone. Being in that dark place where you fight your inner negativity can be scary, and it can honestly feel like you are alone and don't have anyone around to help you even when people offer to help. I also didn't feel comfortable telling a lot of people about my mental health because I felt ashamed, so it helped to find someone who was licensed to deal with these issues and encourage me to do the inner work needed to look honestly at myself and realize that my anxiety and depression doesn't define me and that I can overcome it with little baby steps each day. Seeing how Leslie pulled through and was able to reconcile with Nancy and her son actually gave me hope after seeing how she struggled throughout the movie. Sweeney and Royal don't initially warm up to Leslie after seeing her struggles with addiction and how she treats her job at the motel but they also deal with their own stuff, too, and when they open up to Leslie about what they go through, it gives Leslie the courage to keep going because she has a couple of friends who she can trust to come back to even when it seems that she can't pull through.
I also thought of the movie, Moonlight. In Moonlight, a young Black man named Chiron lives with a mother who struggles with addiction (Naomie Harris played her so well) and she depends emotionally and financially on her son, while also ostracizing him for being gay. The emotional abuse and homophobia Chiron suffered as a child and teenager follows him into adulthood, and he puts on this emotional armor and makes himself look like this tough person. He dons a grill, works out and deals drugs, and it seems like he has moved on from his past. However, his mother reaches out to him and she is recovering from addiction, and they meet up and she breaks down in tears and apologizes for the abuse she inflicted on her son and tells him that she really does love him even when she never really showed it. This brings Chiron to tears because he loves his mother, too, and forgives her but that forgiveness isn't easy because it pains him that for so many years she neglected him and made him feel less than. At the beginning it seemed Leslie was going to live a blissful comfortable life with her son after she won the lottery, but this doesn't end up happening and she becomes estranged from him for many years. She comes back but it's only really to ask him for money so she can keep drinking, and at some point he gets sick of seeing her drink and not take care of herself that he kicks her out. However, when she sees him again it brings back a lot of shame and guilt for her and she feels like she was a bad mom for what she did, and like any mom, she wants to feel like she was doing the best for her kid.
This was a really powerful movie, and I also really love the acting. Andrea Riseborough was fierce in her role as Leslie and her acting captivated me even well after the end of the movie.
To Leslie. 2022. 1 hr 59 m. Directed by Michael Morris and written by Ryan Binaco. Starring Andrea Riseborough, Owen Teague, Allison Janney and Marc Maron. Rated R for language throughout and some drug use.
No comments:
Post a Comment