Good Luck to You, Leo Grande

dir: Sophie Hyde

2022

Well, who doesn’t enjoy a sexy night out at the movies…

Certainly not a film to be watched with the kids around. This flick is pretty much a two-hander, depending as it does on the talents of the two leads, ably played by Emma Thompson and Daryl McCormack. Most of the film transpires within the confines of a hotel room.

And it’s a stagey and talky affair. These characters are not in love; there’s nothing romantic about this story. It is about feelings, though, and mostly the feelings one has about oneself, more than anything else.

And of course it’s about sex, but less about the mechanics of it, or the “getting” of it, and more about what it represents to people, as fulfilment, as release, as missed opportunities, or as an excuse to try to shame people.

Thompson plays a woman in her sixties called Nancy. She has decided, after more than 30 years of marriage, ending with her useless husband’s death, to hire the services of a sex professional to do all the things she didn’t get to do over the course of her life. She says, almost with pride, that she’s never had an orgasm before, and is certain she’s never going to, but that Leo (Daryl McCormack) shouldn’t see that as a challenge.

Leo is smooth, smooth as butter, smooth as a recently waxed chest. He knows the roles he needs to play, the archetypes he has to inhabit, sometimes shifting at the drop of a hat, between a fantasy, a therapist, a listener, a masculine ideal or a reassuring presence. He seems perfectly at ease with himself, and with a charming confidence, but it’s a veneer, like everything else.

She regrets almost immediately that she’s taken this course of action, and feels endlessly like she needs to justify herself or finds flaws in what she’s doing, to prevent herself from going through with it. He is constantly assuring her that they won’t do anything she doesn’t want to do, her comfort and safety are paramount, but also that she should clearly allow herself to enjoy what she’s paid for.

It’s an understatement to say that Nancy is dealing with more than just decades of repression. Initially, amplifying her reluctance, she lashes out at Leo for being in the position that he’s in as someone who sells their body for sex. She asks whether he’s being exploited, whether the tragic circumstances of his upbringing have brought him to this state, but he demurs, assuring her that he is in complete control of himself, that he does what he does because he enjoys it, and that if he wasn’t glad to do it he wouldn’t be there.

But that’s not enough for Nancy. Her need to lash out at someone, to take her frustrations out on someone means he’s the one who will bear the brunt of it. It’s something more profound, and much meaner than you initially assume. What other reason would she so insistently be asking him what his mother would think if she knew how he made his living?

I guess every flick needs an element of conflict, and so the third meeting within the flick is the one where the conflict overwhelms the narrative, and feels the most contrived, I could argue, but that’s not to imply that the performances are any less deeply felt or impressive. Decades of repression can’t generally be undone with four types of any session, whether it be with a sex worker, a psychiatrist or a pilates instructor.

Whatsoever we may think we know about Nancy, it’s the way she talks about her kids and about what she did as a living (she has since retired) that is the most revealing beyond what she says or how she acts. Her adult children, one male, one female, frustrate her. She finds the son boring, and the daughter too dramatic and too needy. So one doesn’t need her at all, and the other needs her too much, and she resents both of them for it.

When talking about the subject she taught (Religious Instruction), she mentions nothing about whether she ever enjoyed teaching or not, or about her male students, but she often speaks about her resentment towards the young female students, especially the ones who dressed in ways she deemed inappropriate. She accuses them of not realising what effect they would have on other students or male teachers…

Like it’s their fault, like they’re doing something wrong?

It falls upon Leo to point out to her that surely they could dress how they wanted to please themselves, and that it wasn’t necessarily about the male gaze or desire at all?

If that sounds ungainly or implausible, or clumsy, the fault lies with my description, and not the way it plays out on screen. I mean, I watched it in shocked disbelief, because we (or at least I) generally associate Emma Thompson the actor with the characters she plays, and I assume, because Emma Thompson is so great and funny and wise and switched on, that her characters should be as well.

When she’s playing an embittered grump who resents young women for their youth, and apparently went out of her way to shame these girls by calling them sluts, I’m taken aback like the idiot that I am, forgetting that she’s playing a character.

One doesn’t need to look too hard to find commentary from elders of the feminist movement or older actresses or even rock stars (Germaine Greer, Camille Paglia, Bridgette Bardot, Chrissie Hynde respectively) saying the young women of today are idiots to complain about sexual assault or harassment, because not only was #MeToo far worse in their day, but you learned to cop it and realised it was the small price you had to pay in order to get anywhere. There have even been women who’ve penned defences of Harvey Weinstein and his ilk. It staggers the fucking mind, but this pro-misogynist bullshit exists. And it’s not even just women who are paid to write for Murdoch papers that do it, either.

I can’t weave together a one-size-fits-all kaftan of an explanation that encompasses what is going through the minds of many of these admittedly great women who’ve achieved so much yet have such contempt for their descendants, but I couldn’t help but think about that while watching the character of Nancy in this film.

Leo defending the sexuality or the choices of other women seems so cloying, but I would argue it works perfectly within the context of the flick. He’s arguing for less shame, more freedom for people to live how they want to live, and Nancy’s arguing that there should be more shame, less freedom, more restrictions, that’s what people need.

Well, how inextricably linked is her attitude towards the sexuality of other people, and her own? How much do think? She is fascinated by Leo, but resents his carefree ways, his seeming freedom, his self-composure. Naturally, to protect her warped sense of self, she needs must convince Leo that he is wrong, that his outlook is wrong.

Which is why she spends some time figuring out who Leo really is, in order to burst his bubble, and prove to him that the world really is a judgy and bleak place, like it should be.

It’s that third appointment, where Leo is so angry for having had his boundaries disrespected, by someone who doesn’t even understand what she’s done wrong, nor her motivation for doing so. She needs to strike at his core, and she can’t do it by belittling his prowess, or his education, but if her aim is true, she can bring him down through his mother.

Her point being: if you’re so comfortable with yourself and what you do, and who you are, how come your mother can’t know about it, eh?

So cruel, so unbelievably cruel. How did she know the one weakness, the one flaw in his elaborate and many-abbed façade?

Maybe, because she was a teacher, and that’s where she learned to tear younger people done.

I make this flick sound much more serious than it is, because honestly it’s so breezy, and the performances are full of charm and crackling energy, so that what I’m describing is the stuff you think about later. You’re not pondering this ponderous stuff in the moment, where you’re just fascinated by the interactions of two talented actors, marvelling at the levels they’re arguing at simultaneously.

The fourth meeting, we are told is to be the last. There’s room for gentle apologies, genuine reflection, some amends to be made (not just to these two characters, a third rando gets dragged in so that Nancy can reconcile with the early generations), and what looks to be the happiest of happy endings. It’s a strong ending, because while people say crap like “oh, how brave of Emma Thompson to do sex scenes, or stand naked in front of a mirror at her age”, the real joy here is seeing her do that and see a smile of self-acceptance spread across her face, to let us know that this character finally has a chance to embrace life in a way kinder (and more fulfilling) than before, independent of who she’s having sex with.

Two performers at the top of their game. A very solid flick, impeccably well written and acted, kinda flatly shot but there’s only so much you can do in a hotel room (other than fuck or read a book).

Good Luck to You, Leo Grande is a credit to all involved, including the viewer. They’re the ones that gain the most.

8 times I too could have abs that look like a cheese grater, but I just don’t wanna out of 10

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“There are nuns out there with more sexual experience than me, it’s embarrassing.” – for me as well, Nancy, for me as well - Good Luck to You, Leo Grande