Austin-Set Indie Is a Fresh Spin on Sibling Friction

It would never be a particularly good time for Mags Malloy’s kid brother to show up unannounced. But when Merritt arrives at the beginning of Leads, Mags is on the edge of unraveling. Nearing 50, she’s raising a 7-year-old and struggling to make ends meet, teaching acting to college students and squeezing in the occasional audition; she’s self-taping one when his knock shatters the quiet evening. Like the cooler full of once-fresh Alaska salmon he magnanimously offers, Merritt’s good intentions have a way of going bad.

But this is essentially a heartening movie. Along with the cavalcade of tensions and explosions that Merritt sets off, there are potentially life-changing breakthroughs. Built around two strong central performances, Bryan Poyser’s well-observed feature captures emotional insights without wallowing in them, along with some low-key zingers about the transactional hopes and expectations that underlie so many relationships within the Hollywood success machine and at its margins.

Mags (Heather Kafka, who starred in Poyser’s 2010 dark comedy Lovers of Hate) has been left in the dust by a couple of showbiz go-getters: her daughter’s TV-star deadbeat dad and, more to the point, the director of Sunspots, the once-upon-a-time Sundance hit in which she starred. When one of her students, gazing up at the poster prominently displayed in Mags’ office, asks about that movie, Mags gets all verklempt, the memory of her youthful optimism rising to the surface, along with certain still-festering wounds. In a couple of days she’ll be hosting Sunspots helmer Taylor Betts’ visit to campus. He’s now the hotshot behind a hit horror franchise, and her connection to him, however tenuous, is also the value she brings to the otherwise tenured faculty.

Unfolding at a slightly fictionalized version of Texas State University (where Poyser teaches), Leads casts a fond but winking eye at earnest actorly lingo and exercises. When Mags wields the actor’s “personal inventory” as a weapon against her brother — an interloper in her classroom — the 19-year-olds surrounding them witness the stinging exchange in astounded silence.

Merritt’s visit is unexpected, but the chaos he brings is not. Kafka makes Mags’ condescension and wariness evident from the get-go, in the way she tenses up around someone she considers “walking jeopardy.” When she isn’t seething, she’s callously dismissive. But Merritt possesses a striking resilience. Played with gusto by Justin Arnold (who appeared in Poyser’s Love & Air Sex), Merritt still speaks with the twang his older sister lost years ago, in pursuit of her screen career. He’s a peripatetic confabulator whose jobs have included firewatcher, rodeo clown and bartender. He’s also a big kid who does everything dialed to 11 — witness the breakfast he whips up for Mags and her daughter, Jo (Hazel Poyser). There’s a desperation in his cheerfulness, but also, as revealed in a climactic scene, a refusal to give in to life’s cruelties.

Having recently taken up guitar, Merritt has a knack as a singer-songwriter. But once he hears how much the commercial Mags just auditioned for would pay, he decides to try his hand at acting, and barrels his way into her class. Upping the sibling rivalry, he hangs out off-campus with some of her students — well played by Wade Smith, Evan Marsh, Kat Adams, Tyra Williams, Ethan Cruz and Jordan Jarvis. He also inserts himself into an especially sensitive matter between Mags and her star student, Alisha (a quietly memorable Aaliyah Tardio), a situation that involves unexpected attraction and feels slightly overplayed, yet in a way that reflects Mags’ state of mind.

As the visiting filmmaker, Macon Blair (Oppenheimer) delivers a subtle, spot-on portrait of Hollywood swagger costumed in just-a-guy scruffiness. When Mags meets Taylor at his hotel, he ingeniously engineers a way of paying tribute to her while keeping her at a distance (and reminding her of his status): a Zoom chat with the leading lady (Sara Paxton) of his Cursor movies, who expresses her sincere and effusive admiration for Mags’ Sunspots performance. One more reminder of her long-dimmed moment in the sun.

Every step of the way, Poyser and DP Ellie Ann Fenton capture the interplay with a fitting straightforwardness, and the character-defining design contributions of Courtney Voss likewise serve the story without announcing themselves. At the heart of Leads is the yin-yang between two misplaced notions: Merritt’s idea of freedom and the mantle of responsibility that Mags wears with her put-upon air. Ultimately Merritt does much more than remind the constantly working Mags that she has a firepit in the backyard she might want to enjoy. He turns simmering worries into explosive messes, and ignites in his sister the courage for at least one cathartic kiss-off. By turns wry and cheery, Leads offers unlessony lessons in stirring up trouble, letting go, and finding clarity in disorder.