Admirers of Heather Kafka, of which there should be many more, will know from the opening moments of “Leads” that it has a happy ending. The Austin-based actress, who has long been a welcome presence for a scene or two in the major studio productions that have rolled through her hometown and has demonstrated quite a bit of range in the local shoots where she’s been enjoyed meatier supporting parts, has a central role to demonstrate her considerable range. But moreover, she’s credited with producing her latest film in addition to helping hatch the story and as the tale of Mags Malloy (Kafka), an acting teacher at a state college starts to unfold, it’s bound to cause a grin among the many other joys to be had in Bryan Poyer’s touching dramedy that Kafka has done what eludes her on-screen persona in taking control over her career.
Given what both Poyser and Kafka have shown before in their first collaboration “Lovers of Hate” as well as separately, there would be a depth to their third film together even if there wasn’t any personal connection to the material. But it does make “Leads” constantly surprising with the nuance that their professional experience clearly brings — the director films at Texas State where he is now a professor himself and a poster of “Lovers of Hate” hangs in Mags’ office. That real-life Sundance success story could be read as looming large in other ways as Mags readily admits early on during a meeting with one of her students that she didn’t know that her faux film “Sunspots,” which premiered at Sundance roughly a decade prior would be the major highlight of her career and never was able to capitalize on, in part because its director Taylor Betts (Macon Blair) didn’t cast her again even as his star took off with a subsequent horror franchise. Still, she remains friends with Betts and has found herself in the unfortunate position at work of wanting to impress her students and colleagues with a visit from him. While he is happy to take time away from preproduction for his latest film to do a favor, the timing seems as if it couldn’t be worse when it coincides with an unexpected visit from her long-estranged brother Merritt (Justin Arnold).
Since Poyser’s debut “Dear Pillow,” about a virgin who befriends a neighbor that writes his version of Penthouse letters for a living, the filmmaker has long shown affection for characters whose perceived flaws are understood as strengths under the right circumstances and Merritt fits the bill nicely when he’s clearly a handful for Mags. Arriving with his left arm in a cast, he claims to have been pummeled to the ground by fifth-graders during a game of football, but it’s a flimsy excuse that Mags thinks better of asking about, especially when she’s got so much else to be concerned about. Besides tending to a class of 19-year-olds, she has a seven-year-old daughter she raises alone and with Merritt around, she has a new kid to take care of. However, when she’s stretched thin between trying to stage a first-class welcome for Betts and sending in self-tapes for a commercial gig that could really help with the rent, it falls upon Merritt to step in to start helping out with her acting students, a stopgap that pays immediate dividends when he has a real rapport with younger people and his own enthusiasm for the craft grows…