To Leslie (2023)

Summary: Leslie is a single mother who has won the lottery winning $190,000. We join her six years after the win, when she has squandered the money and become a drunk, having abandoned her 13 year old son. She is thrown out of her accommodation and goes for help to her son, now a construction worker. He says she can stay but must stop drinking, however she steals from his flatmate and when drunk carouses with a couple of guys in an adjacent apartment. Her son throws her out and she falls on the charity of former friends Dutch and Nancy, in her hometown but when seen out in a bar under the weather they throw her out. She  begins to sleep rough, but us given  a job by Sweeny, who runs a motel. She is still a drunk, so can she hold down the job?

Content: No sex or nudity, although she is always vulnerable to attack. Leslie is more or less continuously drunk, obtaining booze in a variety of ways. She argues with her son and her former friends and is painfully distressed out there in the cold. At the motel she does the job badly, but if she is to survive must change her ways, and is almost unaccountably helped by the motel manager.

A View: My wife and I saw this film at a screen in Madrid, which was almost empty even though it was Saturday afternoon, and this is probably the fate of To Leslie, which did not cost much in cinematic terms, but even so will struggle to make money. Andrea Risborough is in line for the award for Best Actress at the Oscars, somewhat controversially. It is a small film, so if you go for that sort of presentation, probably worth the price of a ticket.