To Leslie

To Leslie (Michael Morris, 2022) wr. Ryan Blinco; Andrea Riseborough, Drew Youngblood, Tom Virtue

Riseborough's acting is too good for this fragile story about a girl who 'when she was bad, she was horrid'. But when she gets off her drug of choice, she is implausibly joyful and energetic.

This is set in Braddock TX (tho not shot there). I find myself in sympathy with small-town-Texan films, so I really enjoyed it.

Peter Bradshaw:
Riseborough brilliantly conveys a strange, almost shapeshifting figure: someone who can look almost glamorous as she drinks in bars throughout the day, but then painfully meagre and waiflike, with giant staring eyes, as if still astonished by this punchline to the bad joke of her life, awakening to another hungover collision with reality and disappointment. Most importantly, Riseborough shows that even though all the money is gone, what is left behind is the radioactivity of addiction and a strange residue of celebrity entitlement: she is now a lottery winner without the lottery winnings, a ruined queen, exiled from her rightful realm by fate, defiant in her sense that she is above all these people who now contemptuously believe themselves better than her, but probably wouldn’t have behaved any differently in her position. She didn’t get the better life she was promised. But was her life different? She had already drawn the losing ticket in the lottery of life. Maybe she was always going to be like this. The Guardian.

References and Links

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Garry Gillard | reviews | New: 31 January, 2023 | Now: 19 March, 2023