Momentum Pictures has just released the official trailer for their upcoming drama To Leslie, starring Andrea Riseborough and Oscar-winner Allison Janney. Set in a small West Texas town, and inspired by true events, the film is a melancholy look at a young woman's life after she's squandered her lottery winnings and made enemies out of friends. The trailer shows the single mother's rise and fall in under a decade, and her struggle to find redemption.
To Leslie first premiered at the 2022 SXSW Film Festival to rave reviews for Riseborough's stark performance as the film's titular character. With a screenplay written by Ryan Binaco in a tribute to his own mother, Leslie is a single mother in West Texas who finds herself the unlikely winner of $190,000, and the possibility of a brand-new life for her young son James. Only a few years later Leslie finds herself all alone at rock-bottom, having spent the entirety of the lottery winnings, and with nothing to show for it. She's been cast out by family and friends, but with nowhere left to go Leslie returns home to a cold reunion. In the most unlikely of places, she finds the support she needs to face the consequences and reconcile her wrongs.
The trailer showcases Morris's ability to capture the suffocation of a small town with a balance of the same small-town intimacy that keeps its residents gravitating to it. In a matter of seconds it goes from Leslie's enthusiastic win to her banishment when she takes advantage of those closest to her. Through the inevitable and grueling rumor mill of rural towns, the trailer explains that Leslie drank through her money and was ostracized, but has since returned with no other options left to her. She's adamant that she wants to be a better mother, and Riseborough delivers a tense, heartbreaking believability as a woman struggling with her addictions.
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Among the ensemble cast, the trailer highlights the pain and inability to forgive through Janney's explosive portrayal of Leslie's cast-aside friend Nancy and her husband Dutch (Stephen Root), both of whom experienced Leslie's rapid spiral. We also meet motel manager Sweeney (Marc Maron) who is able to counter Leslie's hardened behaviors with a gentle outside perspective, and possibly veer her in the right direction.
Riseborough is a star on the rise with a number of productions on the way, including Netflix's Matilda the Musical. Before To Leslie, she gained notoriety as the star of Brandon Cronenberg's horror sci-fi Possessor, and opposite Nicolas Cage in the neon-soaked nightmare Mandy before that. With tense performances by Janney, Maron and Root, along with Owen Teague as Leslie's son James, Andre Royo, James Landry Hebert, Matt Lauria and Catfish Jean, To Leslie showcases the depths of addiction and the difficulty of its repercussions on everyone involved.
To Leslie will be in theaters and On Demand on October 7. You can watch the full trailer below:
