Good Luck to You, Leo Grande – first-look review

A refresh­ing, intel­li­gent bed­room dra­ma, Good Luck to You, Leo Grande is a qui­et­ly hilar­i­ous study on emo­tion­al and sex­u­al inti­ma­cy car­ried by two pow­er­house per­for­mances. The sec­ond fea­ture from direc­tor Sophie Hyde zeroes in on plea­sure-starved, retired teacher Nan­cy Stokes, a role that screen­writer Katy Brand penned specif­i­cal­ly for Emma Thompson.

Nan­cy has nev­er had an orgasm, nor does she know what good sex is sup­posed to feel like. After decades of sup­press­ing her needs and set­tling for uncar­ing, one-sided mis­sion­ary action with her hus­band, the recent­ly wid­owed lead is hun­gry for more. Enter the tit­u­lar hero, male escort Leo Grande (Daryl McCor­ma­ck), whom Nan­cy has hired to get the deed over and done with.

Stuck in her big­ot­ed-adja­cent views, Nan­cy expect­ed an under­priv­i­leged, young man look­ing for easy mon­ey. Leo sur­pris­es her with his dap­per, pro­fes­sion­al and self-aware demeanour, paired with a hedo­nis­tic approach to life and peo­ple. The sex work­er is intrigued and amused by this method­i­cal woman, who, on her part, is grap­pling with sex shame and a deep uncom­fort­able­ness towards her own, age­ing body.

Shot dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, the film takes advan­tage of a self-con­tained space — an unre­mark­ably stan­dard hotel room — to bring Nan­cy and Leo’s fragili­ty to the fore. The room is but a stage where the two leads suss each oth­er out and bare all under Hyde’s nat­u­ral­is­tic, empa­thet­ic direction.

As the pow­er dynam­ics between them con­tin­u­ous­ly shift, the sto­ry thrives in a well-orches­trat­ed bal­ance of com­e­dy and dra­ma that’s as smooth as the film’s nee­dle drops. Cred­its go to the actors’ intox­i­cat­ing chem­istry, with the enthralling McCor­ma­ck match­ing act­ing roy­al­ty Thompson.

The duo ele­vates an already excel­lent script in four chap­ters in which Nan­cy and Leo get to know each oth­er and, most cru­cial­ly, them­selves. Nan­cy, par­tic­u­lar­ly, has to unlearn all she has taught oth­ers dur­ing her career as a reli­gious edu­ca­tion teacher, and not with­out some resistance.

The laugh-out-loud film doesn’t shy away from touch­ing upon top­ics that are nor­mal­ly deemed dif­fi­cult, find­ing unex­pect­ed com­fort in the sus­pend­ed real­i­ty offered by a con­ver­sa­tion with a stranger on neu­tral grounds.

Good Luck to You, Leo Grande is an hon­est, pos­i­tive reflec­tion on sex work that rejects any stig­ma or con­ven­tions, but it also gives a provoca­tive out­look on moth­er­hood and female plea­sure. Sim­i­lar­ly to The Lost Daugh­ter, this film doesn’t tap into the assump­tion that moth­er­hood equals uncon­di­tion­al, unwa­ver­ing love and a will­ing self-sub­ju­ga­tion. Nancy’s unusu­al friend­ship with Leo brings out an almost mater­nal ten­der­ness, pro­vid­ing her with the chance to explore her com­pli­cat­ed feel­ings towards her two children.

Brand nev­er attempts to box Nan­cy and Leo’s rela­tion­ship into what would inevitably be an ill-placed romance, not cav­ing to the pres­sures of a tra­di­tion­al hap­py end­ing. Not that Good Luck to You, Leo Grande doesn’t have its very own life-affirm­ing epilogue.

Per­haps the most bril­liant aspect of this Sun­dance gem is that it fos­ters accep­tance and body neu­tral­i­ty, as opposed to the some­times tox­ic enforce­ment of body pos­i­tiv­i­ty. See­ing Nan­cy reclaim­ing her body with no judge­ment is revolutionary.