"To Leslie", Thoroughly Mediocre

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 A film guaranteed to be remembered more for its baffling Oscars push than for anything that happens on the screen itself, "To Leslie" is perfectly fine. I basically buy the hype on Andrea Riseborough's performance. She finds nuance in her performance - she tends to be quieter than you expect from a toxic mess rural woman, and Riseborough makes sure to always play her as unaware of how toxic she is. Her best scene is the one of aggressive flirting. The man is not interested in the slightest, and is only barely willing to humor her. Leslie is incapable of taking a hint, and keeps pushing harder. 

 I wish the rest of the actors here were more willing to take the same approach. Basically every actor except Riseborough and Marc Maron (softly strong, but the romance plot he gets is unnecessary) has severe Sundance Disease, in which every negative emotion is played at an 11. It makes the whole ordeal feel rather performative. The easy claim for this little film with a big heart is that these flaws should be looked past because so few films are made about genuinely poor people. I don't buy this; Sean Baker tackled motel living in a much more impressive way, with sincere performances and uplifting spirit, just a few years ago. 

 What of the Oscar campaign? I'm torn. One mind says that studio awards campaigning has gotten way out of hand, and if Academy members felt like publicly pushing a film that literally nobody outside of the industry saw until after it got the Best Actress nomination, more power to them. I don't pay any mind to the idea that Riseborough "stole" anyone's spot, not when the deeply awful "Blonde" got nominated in the same category. But the whole thing feels strange still. I believe that Mia Farrow and Kate Winslet enjoyed the film, but a lot of this campaign felt a bit patronizing, as if promoting a small film about true poverty is some kind of grand moral act, and not just an IMDB tick for an underappreciated B-list actress. In the end I'm pretty sure the only cultural impact of "To Leslie" is that Andrea Riseborough is able to get a bit more money the next time she's the 5th credit in a highbrow auteur's ensemble drama, and I guess that's fine too.

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