In the charming, Good Luck To You, Leo Grande, sexual awakening is available by the hour
Emma Thompson shines as a repressed widow who hires a male escort to give her an orgasm
Film Reviews Leo GrandeFrom the moment we meet Nancy Stokes, anxiously pacing around a tastefully anonymous hotel room, knocking back a minibar vodka and posing in the mirror to no great personal satisfaction, we can tell she’s a nervous wreck. And why shouldn’t she be? Nancy is a 55-year-old widow awaiting the arrival of a sex worker who’ll hopefully give her the first orgasm of her entire life. The male escort assigned to this monumental task is the “aesthetically perfect” young Leo (Daryl McCormack) and, as he’ll learn over the course of their four meetings, giving Nancy a chance to premiere her O-face means breaking down her well-established defenses.
If that sounds like the premise for a comedy or even a tragedy, it’s actually neither. Good Luck To You, Leo Grande is a tender and richly satisfying charmer whose themes of self-acceptance and body positivity are delivered with a light and carefully crafted touch. Emma Thompson is at her prickly, vulnerable, fiercely intelligent best as Nancy, a stand-in for every woman who’s suppressed her sexuality out of shame, feelings of inadequacy or a need to please others. Unfolding almost entirely in one room, the film is a two-character study of sexual awakening and a heartfelt, yearning dispatch from the farthest corner of the age divide. It’s a sexually frank and intimate story told in a pleasingly mainstream manner that avoids greeting card clichés and empty “girl power” posturing.
One of the surprises of Australian director Sophie Hyde’s first film since 2019’s hard-partying Animals is that as much as we want Nancy to experience the pleasure she’s long been denied, she’s not asking us to love her, just to root for her. This is a woman who faked every orgasm during her 31-year marriage to her recently deceased husband, so who can blame her for being snippy, churlish and terrified? When Leo first glides into the hotel room, gorgeous and poised with a soothing Irish accent and piercing eyes, Nancy’s knee-jerk reaction is to sabotage the encounter. She peppers him with questions about being an escort. “Do you enjoy it?” “Do you feel demeaned?” “Have you been doing this long?” Leo has faced this line of interrogation before, when the unstoppable force of his charm meets the immovable object of a client’s anxiety. Ever the smooth operator, he effortlessly deflects Nancy’s queries with eminently sensible replies like, “You haven’t bought me, you’ve bought my services.”
Such is the dynamic in the early goings of Katy Brand’s probing, often tart, script. Nancy is a real person and Leo is a fantasy and as long as everyone acts accordingly, things should be fine. But Nancy is too anxiety-ridden to just sink into the moment, so the retired schoolteacher finds more intellectual ways to connect with Leo, starting with his use of $10 words like “reductive” and “empirically.” Soon her well-honed talent for self-deprecation and her fear of disappointment soften and the games begin.
The challenge with any two-hander is that both characters must carry their narrative weight. In Good Luck To You, Leo Grande, this is where things get muddy. Our allegiance and curiosity lie primarily with Nancy not only because her story of frustration is, to some degree, one we can all relate to. It’s also because it’s rare for any film, especially one featuring a middle-aged woman, to be so unapologetic about the joy of exploring one’s sexuality. When Nancy breaks the erotic spell during their second meeting by asking about Leo’s mother, his mysterious past assumes the burden of maintaining our interest. Leo’s reasons for becoming an escort, though, don’t hold a scented candle to Nancy’s fight to escape her decades in the carnal wilderness. The film’s pro-sex worker stance, while cleverly suggesting that both parties are captive to their long-held secrets, feels less like a bold statement and more like a manufactured way to give Leo an arc of his own.
The wonderful Thompson plays Nancy as a bundle of wildly contradictory impulses that still feel like they’re being experienced by the same person. She’s dry and acerbic in a recognizably British way but the awkwardness and self-owning are less frivolous coming from someone so heartbreakingly inexperienced. McCormack’s assignment is to hold his own against an international treasure, and he’s up to the challenge, refusing to reduce Leo to a Ken doll delivery system of late-middle-age sexual fulfillment. The Peaky Blinders vet oozes a velvety and unironic sincerity when Leo is providing the full boyfriend experience.
When Nancy insists on digging into Leo’s past, his runway-ready face droops in anger. All this risk-taking and spilling of secrets requires space, and Hyde gives it to them by staying out of the way. And as Nancy and Leo’s encounters get more emotionally and physically revealing, Bryan Mason’s camera replies in kind, loosening up and drifting around to suggest Nancy’s growing sense of liberation.
At the beginning of Good Luck To You, Leo Grande, Nancy is prone to protect herself with self-abasing jokes like, “There are nuns out there with more sexual experience than me.” By the end, whether Leo pulls off a miracle and sends Nancy to the carnal finish line is almost, but not entirely, beside the point. There’s beauty in merely being open to new forms of pleasure and in taking charge of your sexual needs. In Nancy’s case, satisfaction starts by looking in the mirror and unconditionally loving what you see.
34 Comments
(I’D have helped Emma Thompson.)
Same and she wouldn’t have to pay me either.
I think she’s got someone to do her taxes.
Is that what we’re calling it these days?
it’s what I’m calling it.
Yep. My last trip to H&R Block was awkward as fuck.
I think you misread the BL in Block.(Alternate joke: No, you went to S&M Block.)
Since the folks on TikTok call it “being an accountant”, the metaphor fits.
When it’s taxing, yes.
“spicy accountant”
Meow.
Get in line. Take a number :/
Yeah, got here first, and have nothing going on with Helena Bonham Carter.
If the make a wish foundation gave wishes to adults (and really why don’t they) I would request a date with Emma Thompson. How would that not be fun regardless of how it ended up
I like to think of this as a the sequel to Love Actually we’ve all been waiting for. You know Alan Rickman never gave Emma Thompson an orgasm.
Oh I dunno. He gave her a Joni Mitchell album.
oh I don’t think Heike Makatsch would have been so hot for someone who couldn’t give her what she needed.
Yeah, but I’m sure she ended up with pretty good music collection.
If all she really wanted was an orgasm she should have hired Rene Russo. God I hope there’s a sequel…
Thomas’s Crowning Affair.The judges would have also accepted: Tinning The Cup, In The Line Of Her Duty…;)
Major League 4: Batting for the Other Team?
Oh, well if we can stretch that far, I’ll go with
Die Hard or Die Tryin’
Does Ana De Armas need any help having an orgasm? Asking for a friend.
I keep telling you, we’re not friends, acquaintances at best. But yeah, let me know what you find out.
Is your friend Ben Affleck? He should just be happy he’s back with J.Lo.
Happy to be back with her . . . in a very uncomfortable place!
Like the back of a Volkswagen?
I’d help Emma Thompson find her Nanny G-spot…
I’m delighted that this is as good as it looked. She’s such a phenomenal actress. And screenwriter. And human being. And I’ve had a crush for ages, since she played Beatrice in Branagh’s Much Ado. (Aided by her lovely, sad turn in Peter’s Friends, which is criminally not discussed by film fans, even those who appreciate romcoms.)
I fell for her in Dead Again, three years before Much Ado. And she’s one of the Emmas my cat is named for. (The others being Samms and Watson. So many hot Emmas.)
“…that avoids greeting card clichés and empty “girl power” posturing”I don’t believe this for a second“…when the unstoppable force of his charm meets the immovable object of a client’s anxiety”Jesus fucking christ“.. starting with his use of $10 words like “reductive” “Ok it’s starting to make sense
This site will prop up the most hackneyed pile of shit imaginable so long as it espouses, overtly or vaguely, the right sociopolitical ideals. This one’s “pro sex worker” thus securing a B- even if it were 118 min of Emma and Gunther flailing their tastefully fit legs in the air and farting
This sounds like a really charming film. I hope I get to see it.