Widow hires sex worker to make up for lost time in ‘Leo Grande’
In “Good Luck to You, Leo Grande,” a retired school teacher arranges to meet a sex worker at a hotel in the hopes of making up for decades of being in a physically unfulfilling marriage. Widowed now for two years, she looks to be in her 60s. Her gentleman caller for hire looks to be in his 20s.
“May I kiss you on the cheek?” he asks, a courtly gesture that seems tonally in sync with the brown skirt suit she’s wearing when she opens the door, looking as if she were off to a business meeting. She’s not — she’s just a bundle of nerves, repression and pent-up desire.
More of a drama flecked with humor than outright sex comedy, “Good Luck to You, Leo Grande” stars the consistently wonderful Emma Thompson as Nancy Stokes (not her real name) and the smooth-assilk Daryl McCormack as Leo Grande (not his real
name either).
Their mutual use of pseudonyms preserves their privacy, but there’s a metaphorical subtext, as well: Over a period of subsequent meetings the mask provided by those fake names drops away to reveal more than either originally intended.
Sex with her husband, Nancy explains early on, was rote and orgasm-free. She knows she has been missing out. She’s very inexperienced. And now
she’s grimly determined to change that.
But dropping her proper British exterior proves to be a challenge. Nancy has all kinds of retrograde ideas about sex and gender, and Leo’s not afraid to politely push back. “You’re conflicted,” he tells her. “Conflicted is interesting.”
Her unclenching is a gradual process, and she’s worried her age makes her unappealing. What if
you meet someone and you really just … don’t want to do it? “Hasn’t happened yet,” he says.
There’s a gentleness to Leo. He knows how to keep things light while also being entirely in the moment. He’s suave without being smarmy, thoughtful, a good listener and practiced in the art of seduction. “You learn to read people,” he says. “You have to want to, first.”
The sex lives of people middle-aged (or older) are all but absent from TV and film, particularly from a woman’s point of view, which makes “Good Luck to You, Leo Grande” seem like a welcome arrival. But this is just one portrayal, and I’m reluctant to hold the film to expectations that it must reflect the experiences of all 60-something women. This is a story about a specific character, and ultimately it speaks to the idea that sexual desires exist postmenopause and it’s OK to acknowledge that.
Nancy likes to talk, which she frequently uses as a stall tactic, but eventually her time with Leo opens her up to the idea that we also communicate with our bodies.
Thompson puts just enough of a prickly topspin on her performance to suggest that as a person Nancy can be both unlikeable at times and also worthy of affection, physical or otherwise. She can be nosy, pushing for information, which Leo deftly avoids — until she finally oversteps her mark.
This is the closest the movie comes to an actual narrative: Will these two reconnect? If they do, what would either get out of it?
Written by Katy Brand and directed by Sophie Hyde, the film is intimate without feeling particularly deep or complicated. Not that it needs to be. The sex in “Good Luck to You, Leo Grande” is modestly shot, mostly condensed to a montage featuring a variety of positions.
Thompson gets fully naked in the film, but that doesn’t come until much later — when she’s alone, contemplating herself in the mirror. It’s funny how another person can change the way you look at yourself, good or bad.
Maybe the trick in life is surrounding yourself with people who see you as a person whose appeal is simply innate.
Hulu