In “To Leslie,” we see a woman who is her own worst enemy, a mother estranged from her only son and pretty much everyone else.
For England’s Andrea Riseborough, who unstintingly shows Leslie at her best and worst, there was also responsibility: Leslie is a fictionalized portrait of screenwriter Ryan Binaco’s late mother.
A prologue presents an exuberant Leslie in her small Texas town as she wins the lottery. Jump decades. Every last cent of her winnings is long gone. Leslie, a raging alcoholic, is the town’s sad clown, estranged from her son (Owen Teague).
“To Leslie” however is ultimately about redemption as Leslie finds work, romance, a purpose. Even hope for a familial reunion.
“In many ways,” Riseborough, 40, said in a Zoom interview, “Ryan gave her the ending that she hadn’t had in life. A happy ending.”
“To Leslie” is tough but real. Did Riseborough ever worry whether this might be too much, too disturbing?
“I think that way leads to bad work really. If you’re about to represent somebody,” she answered, “who is in many ways repulsive, then represent them. Right?
“If the film needs to be walked away from and then come back to with a toilet break, then it does. I mean, there aren’t really many options as an actor to make were you to rein in this free-spirited animal that Leslie is. It wouldn’t be an honest retelling of that tale.
“Of course,” she emphasized, “she not Ryan’s mother by any means. She is a reflection and an embodiment of her and far better to delve as deeply as you can into the heart, the pain, the authenticity, the terror of who the person is than to hold back and create some sort of hybrid representation of what humans can be.
“So often humans are misrepresented onscreen, as we all know, for many different reasons. Ryan had been bold enough to celebrate his mother, and I wanted to also celebrate her.”
Come December, Riseborough stars with Emma Thompson and Stephen Graham in the Netflix film version of the Tony-winning Broadway musical “Matilda.”
“I am a trained singer and I’ve usually been focused on dramatic cinema so this has been so much fun. It is actually my first musical movie,” she said.
“The whole team from the original musical play that they did was on the film and to work with them on the film — them having been on the show for 12 years already — and try to morph it into something that was cinematic was just really fascinating.”
“To Leslie” is on VOD.
