The meat of this melancholy, live-action country ballad is left up to the imagination, somewhere in the missing years between the title credits and the point at which Michael Morris’s feature debut actually starts.
It’s probably just as well, since To Leslie is a hard enough watch as it is, not because it’s significantly depressing (redemption is suggested in myriad moments in its two-hour running time) but because it’s a testament to Andrea Riseborough’s never less than committed performance that it’s hard to see such a sad and vulnerable woman snatch defeat from the jaws of victory at every turn.
There are no indications on screen, but anecdotal reports that screenwriter Ryan Binaco based the script on his own mother seem pretty credible.The credits are a mini-movie in themselves, to the sound of Here I Am by Dolly Parton (SXSW’s patron saint this year) we see a montage of family snaps that seem to tell the unspoken story of a once-happy family ripped apart by domestic abuse.
There follows a grainy TV news clip in which our heroine, Leslie (Riseborough), celebrates winning $190k on a local lottery.
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