GOOD LUCK TO YOU, LEO GRANDE
Cert 15 ★★★
In cinemas now
This week, you can really feel the effects of the pandemic on the new releases. Lightyear suggests Disney/Pixar are putting their lazy spin-offs on the big screen and reserving the best films for their paid-for streaming service.
And Covid precautions are painfully apparent in this stagey two-hander written by comic Katy Brand.
The story plays out almost entirely against the visually uninteresting backdrop of a hotel room where Emma Thompson’s sexually frustrated retired RE teacher intends to liberate her libido with the help of handsome, twentysomething male sex worker Leo Grande (Peaky Blinders actor Daryl McCormack). Nancy’s
husband died two years ago. He is the only man she ever slept with and she has never had an orgasm.
Under Leo’s instruction, she intends to discover what she has been missing, efficiently and following a very detailed
timetable. We know all this because Nancy seems intent on wasting most of her three sessions with soulsearching and needlessly quizzing the hunk about his personal life.
The main source of Brand’s comedy is the clash between the prim, conservative client and the confident, free-spirited sex worker. Thompson delivers some very amusing lines with her usual bumbling schtick but there isn’t enough tension to sustain a 90-minute drama.
Of course, no paying punter will disagree with the message about female sexual fulfilment, but the edgiest scenes involve discussions about the legalisation of prostitution.
By the end of the film, Nancy has decided that sex workers should work legally and be paid for by the state. And I’m having trouble finding an NHS dentist.