The long, oddly charming title of "Good Luck to You, Leo Grande" is a line of dialogue spoken near the end of this not-too-long and thoroughly charming British comedy. Much earlier than that, however, you might find yourself expressing some version of the same sentiment. Leo Grande (Daryl McCormack) is a sex worker in his 20s, and while he's had many clients of varying persuasions and proclivities, he has never encountered one quite like Nancy Stokes (Emma Thompson), the prim, anxious 55-year-old widow who's booked him for a high-priced session. Leo will need more than luck to put nervous Nancy at ease; he'll need every tool in his kit, the most impressive and dexterous of which may be his tongue.
No need to get your mind out of the gutter; this movie would prefer it stay there. And it knows that when it comes to sex, the tongue can be an instrument of both pleasure and persuasion. Leo has a way with words, a flair for language that endears him to Nancy, a retired high school teacher. And during most of the four separate appointments that make up Katy Brand's script, Leo and Nancy are engaged in long bouts of verbal foreplay, sharing intimate secrets and navigating a raft of fears and insecurities (most but not all of them Nancy's). You could say that Brand and director Sophie Hyde take their time getting to the good stuff, except that the talk is good stuff, full of erotic tension, playful humor and candid insight into the erogenous zones of the mind.
"What's your fantasy?" Leo asks Nancy during their first meeting in the comfortable-looking hotel room that serves as the film's primary location. But Nancy, leaning hard on her experience as an educator (and also on Thompson's skill at playing persnickety authority types), deals more in goals than fantasies. In one of the film's funnier exchanges, she reads from a list of sex acts she wants to try out, like a waiter rattling off the nightly specials. You have to admire her directness. Having spent decades in a stable, unexciting, orgasm-free marriage, Nancy now wants to shed her inhibitions and satisfy her pent-up longings with a handsome, well-built young man like Leo.
