Good Luck to You, Leo Grande

Emma Thomp­son plays to her for­mi­da­ble strengths as Nan­cy, a caus­tic but kind RE teacher, recent­ly wid­owed, who has lived a sex­u­al­ly-unful­filled exis­tence. She has nev­er orgasmed, giv­en or received oral sex or even attempt­ed a posi­tion beyond duti­ful mis­sion­ary with her ​“bor­ing” ex-hus­band. Now freed from her mat­ri­mo­ni­al bonds she hires Leo Grande so she can final­ly expe­ri­ence some of the sex­u­al exhil­a­ra­tion that has long elud­ed her. Sophie Hyde’s Good Luck to You, Leo Grande charts Nancy’s voy­age of sex­u­al and self-dis­cov­ery across a series of meet­ing the two have at a chic hotel.

Leo has an almost angel­ic pres­ence as an insight­ful, warm man who loves his job. Where Nan­cy wor­ries she has hired a ​“sex-traf­ficked orphan”, instead she finds an empow­ered and eru­dite young man, and the two engage in a wit­ty repar­tee. While Thomp­son han­dling zingy dia­logue with emo­tion­al crescen­dos is no sur­prise, Daryl McCor­ma­ck as Leo, meets, and occa­sion­al­ly exceeds her. He’s a more calm fig­ure, and has walls of pro­fes­sion­al­ism around him, strict­ly adher­ing to a code of behav­iour while gen­tly rebuff­ing Nancy’s pre­sump­tions around him. The con­fines of the hotel room give Nan­cy per­mis­sion to become pure id, yet McCor­ma­ck has the chal­lenge of retain­ing a con­sum­mate pro­fes­sion­al­ism while still allow­ing some of Nancy’s cru­eller words cut through.

While keep­ing to the con­fines of a sin­gle suite has ​“Covid film­ing restric­tions” writ­ten all over it, the lim­it­ed loca­tion also give the film an almost sci-fi veneer with our two leads dis­con­nect­ed from the out­side world, nei­ther using their own name. The pas­sage of time feels elas­tic. The two talk open­ly about moth­er­hood, sex work, edu­ca­tion and body-image with a nat­ur­al zip­pi­ness, Katy Brand’s script makes the progress through such hot but­ton top­ics seam­less. The chem­istry between the two, the gen­tle teas­ing and unex­hib­it­ed danc­ing that slow­ly melts into the sex is utter­ly deli­cious. Nan­cy shocks her­self by hir­ing Leo Grande in the first place that, yet the fact she con­tin­ues to go back to him feels entire­ly earned.

Both Leo Grande and direc­tor Hyde’s focus is on Nancy’s plea­sure, be it enjoy­ing being eat­en out with aplomb or trac­ing her hands across a mus­cu­lar chest. It’s a joy to see a bona fide nation­al trea­sure like Thomp­son con­fi­dent­ly naked on screen and pre­sent­ed as an object of desire at 62. While its not a sug­ar- coat­ed fairy­tale and the film veers off the path ​“sex saint­hood” with bound­aries being crossed and Oedi­pal under­tones acknowl­edged, the film is still best at its sweet­ness. The sto­ry focus­es on the mutu­al grat­i­fi­ca­tion the pro­tag­o­nists pro­vide each oth­er, and how two imper­fect humans meet­ing can prove a shared anti­dote for world­ly ills.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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