The decade of the 90s was absolutely bursting with romantic comedies. Between Meg Ryan in films like Sleepless in Seattle, You've Got Mail, and French Kiss and Julia Roberts in my Best Friend's Wedding, Runaway Bride, and Notting Hill, the two leading ladies pretty much cornered the market on the genre. But one role that Ryan took on was a complete departure for her. In the midst of her run of rom-coms, Ryan played an alcoholic mother of two young girls in the 1994 family drama film, When a Man Loves a Woman, opposite Andy García. There is very little romance and absolutely no comedy in this one. The role was a powerful one that details the life of an upper-middle-class woman living in San Francisco who starts to struggle with the vicissitudes of everyday life and parenting small children and turns to alcohol to deal with her anxieties. Ryan received a SAG nomination for her portrayal. It is, for better or worse, the 90s version of the 2023 Oscar-nominated role of Leslie Rowlands (Andrea Riseborough) in the film, To Leslie. There are some undeniable similarities between the two characters that are separated by 30 years, and though they may have very different backgrounds and find themselves in very separate economic situations, both share a disease that is a brutal and unyielding equalizer.
Alcoholism Doesn't Discriminate
Ryan's character, Alice Green, lives in a beautiful home near the top of one of San Francisco's hilly streets with a spectacular view of the city. Her husband, Michael (García) is a well-respected pilot for a major airline and appears to be nothing short of a loving and supportive husband. Alice works as an elementary school teacher and together, they have a very comfortable life complete with two darling little girls, Jess (Tina Majorino) and Casey (Mae Whitman), who also have a doting nanny. Outwardly, it seems pretty darn close to an ideal situation. But she's hiding a secret. So is the titular character in To Leslie, who comes from a very poor West Texas home, and becomes pregnant with her son, James (Owen Teague) at a young age. She is already struggling to make ends meet and boozing hard when the unlikely happens. She comes into a windfall of cash after winning the lottery. It's a life-changing amount of money for an individual with her background and where she comes from. But what these women have in common doesn't care about any of that, because they both are looking for answers at the bottom of a bottle. They're searching for safety and peace of mind that comes from numbing the mind to the harsh realities of the world they are living in.
Alice and Leslie Hit Rock Bottom
For Alice, rock bottom comes in the form of an ugly episode she has with her intelligent and inquisitive eldest daughter, Jess. While Alice is hungover from a bender the night before, Jess approaches her and is curious why she's washing down a couple of aspirin with a bottle of vodka. Alice lashes out and really lays into her daughter, slapping her hard across the face. Later, Jess discovers Alice laying naked on the bathroom floor after passing out after a day's drinking session. It's an unforgettable sequence that shows the ugliness of the disease that eats away at your soul. Leslie's rock bottom isn't as ugly as this but it's a lot more public. It's a gradual process that sees her humiliated at a town dance when Allison Janney's character, Nancy, who was left to raise her son when she took off, exposes how she abandoned her own 13-year-old son after blowing through all of her lottery winnings on booze and drugs in front of the whole town.
This also includes her new romantic interest, Sweeney (Mark Maron), who has bent over backward to get Leslie back on her feet, giving her a job and a room to spare her from homelessness. Leslie barks back at Nancy before leaving the dance, embarrassed and belittled for what addiction has done to leave her life in shambles. The common denominator between these two characters, and really any addict who is being honest with themselves, is that substance abuse will eventually rob you of your dignity and hurt the ones that are closest to you. The ones who love and need you the most get left out in the cold, usually in the form of children and significant others.
Alice Gets Help and Leslie Gets Busy
There are some things that can never be completely expunged from an alcoholic's downward spiral and crash. Things that are said and done will remain some of your biggest regrets for the remainder of your days. If you put in the work, however, you can scratch and claw back some of that dignity that you lost. For Alice, it's fully embracing the rehabilitation process from stem to stern. That involves a grueling detoxification process that will make you wish for death, admitting that she has no control over alcohol and that she must reevaluate who she is, aside from the booze-addled empty shell that she was before. Alice has to start from scratch and determine if she loves her husband, Michael, for what and who he is when she is stone sober and not under the influence.
Leslie's detox is dangerously unsupervised for an alcoholic like her who can't go for more than a few hours before experiencing the debilitating symptoms of withdrawal. She makes it through with the support of Sweeney and a friend from her drinking days, Royal (Andre Royo), who is a little more gun-shy in dealing with Leslie, as he is one of the people who have been burned by her in the past. Leslie decides to throw herself into a project to occupy her thoughts and mitigate her cravings. When she renovates a dilapidated building into a quaint little restaurant, she is finally in a pretty good place. In the film's final scene, the straight-shooting Nancy rewards her by surprising her with a visit from her estranged son, James, on the opening night of her new venture.
The Ending of These Movies Is Just the Beginning for the Characters
These are not happily ever after stories - far from it, actually. The work that both Alice and Leslie have put in to get them to this point marks their beginning of making things right. It's the beginning of the hardest part of alcoholism - facing life as it comes, free of the mind-numbing elixirs that they both relied on to cope with everyday life and the hardscrabble twists and turns that are unavoidable. It lasts for the rest of your time on this earth and is just one bad decision away from rearing its ugly head again. For Ryan, playing Green was a complete 180-degree turn away from the sweet, girl-next-door rom-com roles from a bygone era that is still what she is remembered for. As for Riseborough, the 41-year-old actress is finally being recognized by her peers and the Academy for her varied abilities, and a career as an actor's actor who's flown under the radar while delivering an array of fantastically flawed characters.