1/31/23 - To Leslie (2022) - 6+/7-/10

A hard luck woman struggling with her demons to find some peace, redemption and a path forward doesn’t extend beyond the standard story but is ground like tear stained dirt in denim by stellar acting. Riseborough hits every beat with a deftness and strength that is nothing but admirable. Lived in with pain and sorrow digested into constant loss and hopeless hardship dance behind her profound scrutinizing and tortured pauses. She does a magnificent job of twisting on a dime like a hardened alcoholic does and pressuring us into those empathetic moments. She is master of the screen and drug me into the dusty distance, especially when heartfelt sparring with Allison Janney.

Marc Maron, Andre Royo (Bubbles from the Wire), and Owen Teague are relatable counterpoints, and allow this relatively simple and generally predictable story to land in the soft spot of your heart. I expected some even lower and more soul crushing realities to smash, and I am glad that they didn’t. What was there was enough.

I watched it with an “impress me”-esque attitude and Riseborough and the director Michael Morris did.