"Good Luck to You, Leo Grande" -- Movie Review

 

This week at Film At Lincoln Center, I attended a screening of the new comedy-drama “Good Luck to You, Leo Grande”, starring Emma Thompson. 

Synopsis

When a widow hires a professional escort to experience a sexual awakening late in life, can they find a deeper connection?

Story

Nancy (Thompson) was faithfully married for over 30 years before her husband died.  Together, they raised a son and a daughter, both of whom became responsible adults.  While the couple may have kept their “until death do us part pledge”, she found the whole experience deeply unsatisfying and unfulfilling.  This is largely because as a religious education teacher, she had little sexual experience prior to her marriage and her late husband didn’t really know – or care – about how to fulfill his wife’s needs.  Now that she’s all alone, Nancy is trying to make up for quite a bit of lost time.  This is why she’s hired Leo Grande. 

Leo Grande (Daryl McCormack) is what you might consider an independent contractor.  Or perhaps a leisure consultant.  To some, he may be a therapist of some sort. Professional consort, if you prefer.  In any event, Nancy hires this young man in order to give her the best sexual experience of her life.  Since she feels that she’s missed out on so much, Nancy believes that she must now take advantage of her freedom to make up for quite a bit of lost time.  Leo is more than happy to oblige – for a price, of course.  After all, he’s an entrepreneur with a business to run.  He sells a service for which many gladly pay.   

Over time, Nancy hires Leo for his extraordinary professional services; the teacher now finds herself to be the student.  But she suddenly finds herself wanting more.  Who is this unusual young man and how did he wind up in this line of work?  As a way to draw him out, Nancy reveals to him quite a bit of intimate personal information; while she hopes he will reciprocate, he only shares so much and is careful not to provide too much that would compromise his situation.  Eventually, it becomes clear to Leo that Nancy is expecting much more from him than he can give.  When he refuses to have any more sessions with her, will Nancy still be looking for her first ever orgasm?

Review

“Leo Grande” is a pleasant but predictable comedy-drama that’s equally sex-positive, body-positive and age-positive; it also does not take a judgmental or patronizing view of sex workers.  For all of those reasons, it should be commended, but note that there are few surprises and the story goes just about the way you think it’s going to go; if you’re waiting for big twists and turns here, you’ll be sorely disappointed.  Nevertheless, it’s quite enjoyable in a way that doesn’t really demand much from the audience.  What’s also no surprise here is how absolutely excellent Emma Thompson is utterly excellent. 

One drawback to the film – and it’s a fairly obvious one – is the fact that it has the look and feel of a play.  This is because the overwhelming majority of “Leo Grand” takes place in a hotel room – in fact the same hotel room in every scene.  As a result, it clearly feels a bit claustrophobic; there are definitely attempts to open it up a bit more, but given the way the script is written, there’s really very little that the director could do to take us outside of that space.  Granted, the idea here is that the relationship between these characters only exists in that hotel room, but it feels like it could have been shot as the performance of a stage play. 

This movie had its New York Premiere recently at this year's Tribeca Film Festival; if you are interested in seeing “Leo Grande”, it is currently streaming on Hulu.  At only about an hour and a half, it doesn’t ask much of your time.  It’s entertaining but in no way challenging, so if you’re looking for something light and buoyantly entertaining, so long as you don’t go in expecting a great deal of belly laughs; it is more amusing than it is actually funny, despite the attempts by Thompson’s character to appear embarrassingly awkward sexually.  This with the older woman-younger man fantasy should find this one deeply satisfying.