It is a truth universally acknowledged that any film, released after 1990, featuring a sex worker with a heart of gold, must recall Pretty Woman, the Julia Roberts hit that has served as a dream factory for sex workers and conventionally mismatched lovers for decades. There is a sex worker with a heart of gold—and the body of a god—in Good Luck To You, Leo Grande; but the film’s first few scenes recall not Pretty Woman but the 1999 novel Disgrace, which won the Booker Prize for eventual Nobel laureate J.M. Coetzee.
That book famously began with an introduction to the sexual protocol of its aging protagonist: “For a man of his age, 52, divorced, he has, to his mind, solved the problem of sex rather well.”
Well, change the gender, and it’s the same for Nancy Stokes, the aging widow played by Emma Thompson in Good Luck to You, Leo Grande—or so it seems. She is on the cusp of partaking in her own solution: an appointment with Leo Grande, a “sex therapist” embodied by the exceptionally good-looking Daryl McCormack. Where Coetzee’s hero, perhaps because he’s male, is confident in his consumption of his paid partner, Nancy is nervous. She has never had an orgasm and she has neither received nor given a blowjob. She is the lead character in her own sexual bildungsroman.
Her companion has quite a lot going for him. Besides his good looks, he is incredibly attentive, impossibly well-mannered, and extraordinarily patient. Anyone would be resentful. And so it is for Nancy, although she seems impressed by his vocabulary, which she notes with admiration includes the word “empirically”.
If our client already seems a handful, it is because she is. But there’s a reason. Ordering sex is not her purview and if she goes through with what she has ordered, Leo becomes only her second lover. You want her and the story to move along but you get her reluctance. Kind of. For a film that takes place mostly in a single room, there is a limit to how much going over a single thread of not particularly witty dialogue one can take. Fortunately, cinematographer Bryan Mason and production designer Miren Maranon have made the film about as handsome as its male lead. Every indoor scene is so impeccably lit, it might as well be outdoors. Each image has a sparkly quality. This adds a level of fantasy to the plot, especially with the dreamboat male lead. If the average sex worker looked, talked, and listened like Leo and/or McCormack, sex work might be rid of its stigma.
Director Sophie Hyde and screenwriter Katy Brand treat the characters without judgement, which makes it a bit difficult to see where the inevitable conflict might come from after Nancy and Leo’s initial meeting. Another meeting might be arranged and sex must be had, since it is quite clear that this is a sex-positive film—but where is the conflict in a film taken up mostly by one shy, semi-aggressive person and her pliant, compliant service provider?
Well, the conflict does arrive but in keeping with the low energy of the film, it’s not an earth-shaking conflict, even if the characters seem to think it is. The source of this conflict happens to be extracurricular, given that it is about what isn’t present in the room: real life. The lesson, implicit in this watchable but hardly compelling film, is that, although seeking sex for the unattached and the aging is hard, getting to know another person is even more difficult. That is not exactly a ground-breaking lesson but the leads are committed to its demands.
Good Luck to You, Leo Grande should get a marquee position wherever female-themed programmes are scheduled on TV, streamers, and festivals. And its screenings at both Sundance and the Berlin Film Festival will ensure a visibility that works in its favour, Europe and the US being potentially lucrative markets. It doesn’t hurt that McCormack looks the way he does. In fact, his playing opposite the well-respected Thompson should be a winning mix for women viewers across age groups.
Director: Sophie Hyde
Screenplay: Katy Brand
Cast: Emma Thompson, Daryl McCormack
Producers: Debbie Gray, Adrian PolitowskiCinematography: Bryan Mason
Production Design: Miren Maranon
Editing: Bryan Mason
Music: Stephen Rennicks
Sound Design: Steve Fannagan
Production Company: Genesius Pictures (London, UK)
World Sales: Cornerstone Films (London, UK)
Venue: Berlin International Film Festival (Special Gala)
In English
97 minutes
