Good Luck to You, Leo Grande (2022)
Just a toy for pleasure? Maybe. But can he also render more vital services?
Confident Leo (Daryl McCormack) patiently listens to skittish Nancy (Emma Thompson)
Good Luck to You, Leo Grande (2022)
Streaming on Hulu
This is a fairy tale, and there’s nothing wrong with those. Okay? It has nothing to be ashamed of. But you should understand what you’re getting into. It bares bodies and souls — well, in a manner of speaking. Circumspectly. If you want your sexual/moral imagination expanded, I’m not sure how much this movie will help you.
Okay, that’s out of the way. Now, if you really want to know, it focuses on the repressed sexual desires of a late-middle aged, retired schoolteacher named Nancy Stokes (Emma Thompson). I bet you’ll predict that before the movie is over Nancy will love her body, reignite her extinguished, wiped out, crushed sexual longings, and, you shouldn’t have trouble imagining, embrace her needy, lovely, well-meaning self.
Oh dear. Have I spoiled it for you? No, of course not; you’ve been around. Here’s the deal: when we meet held-in, uptight Nancy she’s determined to Get It On. So, she hires a hot mid-20s sex worker, Leo Grande (Daryl McCormack).
Luckily for repressed Nancy, Leo turns out to be not just consummately experienced in sexual pleasuring. He can also reinvigorate the you that you like best. He can do you; he can renew you. What a bargain! Payment in advance, please, electronically deposited to his bank account.
Why begrudge Nancy a bit of heedless, satisfying sex? She believes, rightly or wrongly, that once she nails it, or is nailed, or something, she’ll feel better about herself. Nancy’s husband has been dead for two years. For the entire 30 years of their marriage, they had nothing but cold, robotic missionary sex. And during all that time with him, the only man she’s ever slept with, Nancy never once had – experienced – an orgasm.
You think I’m ruining this fairy tale for you? Giving away the ending? Come on. You’re an adult. You don’t think, do you, that in this movie you’ll actually learn why Nancy put up with arid, passionless sex for three decades? No, the script isn’t wading into those murky waters. Remember, characters in fairy tales don’t always broodingly interrogate the past. They sometimes — poof! — magically escape its clutches.
Hey, you’ll have fun. Nancy and Leo meet in a comfy, luxe hotel room, the same hotel room, for three encounters. They flirt, they tease, they dance. Leo can expertly put his clients at ease, so he induces Nancy to relax and go with the flow. Drink some champagne. Slip into a slinky outfit. They don’t, for the first two meetings, have a lot of down and dirty, grunt and grind, you know, sex.
Inexperienced Nancy (Emma Thompson) is urged on by younger but wiser Leo (Daryl McCormack)
What they do more of is find out that each of them has A Life. Leo is estranged from his family because, the script reports, he once threw a party where he and his young friends fooled around a bit, well, a lot, and when his mother unexpectedly walked in, she was royally PO’d. So, she disowned him, if you can believe that. He’s also not close to his brother, but there’s hope on that front. No spoilers.
Nancy, not a merry, rather a chary, widow – you see what I did there, right? – just Can’t Grasp the Point of Her Life. She says her teaching career has never inspired or enlightened a single one of her students. She finds her adult son, a technocrat, “boring”, for reasons, Leo points out to her, that are shallow and unfair. Her adult daughter has happily adopted a counterculture lifestyle and is making no solid career plans. Leo suggests the daughter’s free spirit be celebrated, not criticized.
So, what do Nancy and Leo, these two unmoored seekers, learn from one another? Come on, haven’t you been following me here? Nancy needs to trust her warmest instincts, love her aging, still beautiful, body and show more respect to her children. Got it. Leo needs to learn not to rely on his gorgeous body and be guided by, get more in touch with, his heart, mind and instinctive kindness. You’re bigger than your bank balance, Leo.
And they both lower their defenses and shed Real Tears in front of each other.
All of that is progress, right?
On top of that, Nancy finally drops her weightiest inhibitions and she and Leo go at it and Get Busy. Which is surely what you expected.
Will you be offended? Certainly not. Moved? A smidgen. Thompson and McCormack are adept and pleasing in their roles, and you won’t resent spending a brisk 97 minutes with them. They don’t fake “poignancy” and never overdo the bittersweet angst. They’re physically graceful, especially when their characters are meant to appear wary, which is occasionally true of Leo, or awkward, which is often the case with Nancy.
Yet despite the movie’s nicety of tone and execution, its “lessons” of self-acceptance are so meager that, added up, they feel like an okay one-night stand. The Earth doesn’t move. We like these two people, but we want a chance to know them better, to be allowed to root for them fully dressed, out in the world.
The director, Sophie Hyde, shepherds both actors with sensitivity and taste, and she doesn’t stretch out the script’s mild revelations. Also, the movie looks handsome, so you can definitely have a good time.
But the entire concept turns on wholesome eroticism. The booty call that builds character. You’ve had those, right? However, intimacy can call up all sorts of non-sexual feelings, some joyous, like fond memories, others astringent, like lingering unsettled scores.
Why, we’re free to wonder, does no scorching emotional lava bubble up? We see nothing like rage from Nancy at those three decades of neglect meted out by her cruel, selfish husband. And Leo never fully cops to the riot act he’s burning to read his holier-than-thou mother for insisting that sex is sinful and throwing him out of the house, just because he thinks it’s a rightful pleasure.
Katy Brand’s screenplay hints that Nancy and Leo are both in flux, pondering next moves in their lives that they can’t quite step up to. But to their credit, they’re open to growing, to facing hard facts about themselves and others. Which suggests that the script might have been richer if it had started near where it ends.
As I watched, once Nancy and Leo’s layers were pulled back, and they vowed to become honest, open, vulnerable adults, I said to the screen, “Yes, yes!” and I wanted to go on with them.
But no such luck. They’ve changed a bit but haven’t deepened our understanding of their long-buried pain. And barely hinted at how they’ll begin to surmount it.
Precisely when Leo and Nancy are itching to risk more, to learn how vibrant sex and honest struggle can amplify each other, the salutary story scales down their resolve into a benign, philanthropic just-one-of-those-things.
Hey, no problem. We’ve had a nice fling. We recognize a charming fairy tale when we’re left with one.