R | 1h 59min | Drama | 2022
Is self-indulgence a one-way street to self-destruction, or does love offer escape from destruction? Movingly, this film asks and answers that question.
Leslie Rowland (Andrea Riseborough), single mother to her only child James, drinks away her $190,000 lottery winnings in six years, estranging her from her town and James, who’s left in the care of friends Dutch (Stephen Root) and Nancy (Allison Janney).
Grown up, 19-year-old James (Owen Teague) lives in another town by himself. Battered from her vagrancy, Leslie finds him, vowing to reform. Stung by her earlier callousness, he’s wary. Still, he takes her in on two conditions: She won’t drink, and won’t stay indefinitely. But she backslides. Heartbroken, he sends her to Dutch and Nancy.
Sober too briefly, Leslie is on the road again when two kind men hire her as a motel maid. The eccentric Royal (Andre Royo) owns the motel, but his friend Sweeney (Marc Maron) runs it. Gentle Sweeney’s love helps Leslie break her addiction, regain her sense of self, and convert a nearby rundown ice-cream shack into a diner. But just when things brighten, she loses hope that she’ll ever be reunited with her son.
Supported by a superb cast, and shunning scenes of violence and sex, director Michael Morris skips through Leslie’s past, dwelling instead on her present, and pondering her future. A montage of family photos shows her sloshed, hungover, or partying. Home-videos of her lottery win show her delirious at the prospect of spending her winnings, rather than investing all that money to raise her son. Her extra-wide grin masks her knee-high self-esteem.
Ryan Binaco’s screenplay, drawing loosely on his mother’s life, suggests that without self-acceptance, it’s harder to accept others. Without responsibilities, it’s harder to enjoy rights. To him addictions are not diseases, but destructive habits, flowing from deliberately deformed wills. He doesn’t touch on obvious exceptions: those forced into addiction because of their tender age, innocence, or poverty. Instead, through Leslie’s character, he dwells on the majority of addicts: otherwise empowered adults who surrender their worth (their will, their judgment) to substances.
Mr. Binaco sees ostracism as a form of love; it’s how communities and families show individuals what they should aspire to. When bystanders like Nancy, tolerate addictions, or when addicts equate themselves with the likes of cancer victims, they endorse indulgence. Disciplined families aren’t rejecting addicts, merely rebuking them. They’re not saying, “We don’t accept you.” They’re saying “We don’t accept addiction as an inevitable part of you.” Love doesn’t pander. It envisages the best, not worst, versions of ourselves.
An Anatomy of Addiction
Leslie disowns responsibility. Of Dutch and Nancy she says, “They’re the reason I’m the way I am.” When James rebukes her she pleads, “I’m sick.” But she’s particular about her rights. When he demands that she stays clean, she retorts, “I’m your mother. You cannot talk to me this way.” Why won’t she change? “I can’t help it.”James has no time for girls or his guitar, he’d rather work and save up. He abhors her addiction but is desperate to be her son; knowing he’ll be exhausted after a busy day, he still offers to take a walk with her in the evening.
The film’s title appears to be a loved one’s letter “To Leslie,” but Riseborough’s heart-wrenching performance makes it more like “From Leslie”: her note, to everyone else.
One of Leslie’s most explosive scenes is her quietest. It’s night. She’s had a rough day. Entitled, she walks over to a sleeping Royal, slides a hip whiskey-flask out of his jacket, walks out, opens the bottle, raises it to her face, inhales deeply, as if smelling every drop. Then she throws her head back, smiles, closes the bottle without taking a sip, and places the flask right back.
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