In “Good Luck to You, Leo Grande” on Hulu, a retired school teacher arranges to meet a sex worker at 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 post-assignation. 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” is a two-hander — forgive me if that sounds like a double entendre considering the subject matter, really it’s not! — starring the consistently wonderful Emma Thompson as Nancy Stokes (not her real name) and the smooth as silk 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’s been missing out. She’s very inexperienced. And now she’s grimly determined to change that. But dropping her proper British exterior just enough to let Leo do his thing — “letting go of the thing inside that judges you,” as she puts it — proves to be a challenge. Nancy has all kinds of retrograde ideas about sex and gender, and he’s not afraid to politely push back them. “You’re conflicted,” he tells her. “Conflicted is interesting.”
It’s a gradual process, her unclenching, 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 present and in the moment. He’s suave without being smarmy. Thoughtful and a good listener. And practiced in the art of seduction. He’s not just going through the motions. “You learn to read people,” he says. “You have to want to, first.” You have to want to. Now that’s a helluva observation.
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 — what took so long? — 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 specific story about a specific character and ultimately it speaks to the idea that sexual desires exist postmenopause and it’s OK to acknowledge that — or hell, make an entire movie about it.
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. Even so, she’s forever in her head. Sometimes she’s pretty terrible and self-involved. 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? Even if they do, what would either get out of it?
Written by Katy Brand and directed by Sophie Hyde, the film is more interested in the Nancy of it all, and you have a sense of who she might be outside this hotel room they keep returning to. Not so with Leo. There’s real skill in what McCormack is doing here, suggesting that Leo has all kinds of things running through his head that he keeps to himself. But aside from some biographical details that emerge, Leo remains a mystery. He’s young, a little devilish and easy to be around. Nice to look at. This is a vocation he chose and seems to enjoy, for the most part. But he’s a cipher nonetheless. That kind of personal boundary makes sense in his professional life, but as a movie character, it also means his own wants and needs, his thoughts and interests, are flattened out of existence.
As a result, 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 — “I can’t balance like this,” Nancy says at one point and it may be the realest moment of the entire movie — which gets at the way sex can feel transcendent but also earthbound by practical considerations like … physics. 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.
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'GOOD LUCK TO YOU, LEO GRANDE'
2.5 stars (out of 4)
MPAA rating: R (for sexual content, graphic nudity and some language)
Running time: 1:37
How to watch: Hulu
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