To Leslie * * * *

Addiction films are a bit like Road movies.  It's all about the journey with lessons being learned along the way.

To Leslie starts off with a woman winning the lottery.  We get an insight of the kind of person we are dealing with: early thirties but no class, gross, loud and vulgar.  You might be asking yourself, do you really want to spend the next two hours with this person?

We cut to six years later and Leslie is penniless and being evicted from some cheap joint.  She's obviously blown the lot. She is shamelessly begging money from the other tenants and cursing them  when they won't cough up.

With her few possessions packed into a cheap suitcase she makes her way to another city where her son lives.  He's a single young man.  Actually quite a fine young man.  Honorable, hard working and decent.  He takes her in. 

It's kind of weird with a twenty year old telling a forty year old that she has to abide by his rules in his home. But that's the kind of mess she is.  Also, James has seen it all before and he's not so ready to give in to her cooing and begging along with her endless bullshit.

What makes you think I been drinking?

As an alcoholic she soon stuffs it up.  As promised, James evicts her.  

She goes back to her small home town to stay with Nancy her ex-best friend and Nancy's partner Dutch, who very reluctantly take her in. We learn  that for years it was Nancy who cared for James whilst Leslie was off  partying and blowing her money.  

Leslie's journey is perversely fascinating to watch. Set in South West Texas, she frequents  bars with rocking country and western bands and  two types of cowboys: perfect gentlemen and mean bastards.  She drinks to excess every time.  

She's a nasty drunk, full of self pity and accusations. 

Nancy and Dutch are at trigger point with Leslie. One step wrong and she's gone..... and.....  she's gone! (Didn't take long).

Still stuck in her home town she sleeps on the streets.  People point her out as "the lottery girl".  One night she sleeps in the shrubbery outside a cheap motel.  Unbeknownst to herself she is just about to win the lottery again. Sweeney, the Motel manager gives her a job and a place to stay and another shot at life.  Predictably she blows it. 

Sweeney tells her he's had enough and tells her to leave.  At that point she realises she's blown her last chance.   Then the change comes.  But all alcoholics never really finish the journey, they just make it a longer time between drinks. 

Or perhaps Leslie can prove us wrong?  No spoilers here. 

Interestingly, for all its American Folklore To Leslie was made by a British Director and it features a lead actress who is also British.  

I have since learned there is some controversy about the lead actress (Andrea Riseborough ) getting a nomination for an Oscar.  Personally, I hope she wins it: partly because of the way she was nominated, which greatly upset the usual exclusive procedure. Under the normal process no one would have noticed her. 

I also hope she wins, because her performance is probably the best of the nominees.