Film Review - Widow and retired religion teacher has always been 'disappointed'
Good Luck to you, Leo Grande_Photo Nick Wall for Declan Burke Caroline Delaney
Good Luck to You, Leo Grande (16s) stars Emma Thompson as Nancy Stokes, a 55-year-old widow and retired religion teacher who decides to hire a 25-year-old gigolo, Leo (played by Irish actor, Daryl McCormack), for a long-overdue night’s pleasure.
‘I have always been disappointed,’ Nancy tells Leo, and she’s not just speaking about her experience in the bedroom: Nancy believes that her whole life has been a third-rate affair, a life that has been dominated not only by her ex-husband but by her willingness to play by the rules and suppress her desires for the sake of others (even her fantasies, she admits, ‘are a bit mundane’). Can Leo generate the spark that might reignite Nancy’s self-belief?
Written by Katy Brand and directed by Sophie Hyde, the film is almost entirely set in the hotel room Nancy books for her encounter with Leo, who initially sets strait-laced Nancy at her ease when she tells him that ‘there are nuns out there with more sexual experience than me'.
Terrified of finding herself getting out of control, Nancy is superbly played by Emma Thompson, who delights in finding the nuances in the understandably nervous Nancy as she tiptoes to the very edge of her comfort zone.
Daryl McCormack makes for a good foil, playing Leo as a handsome, charming young gentleman with a nifty line in Irish brogue, even if his likeably languid style doesn’t quite cut it when he’s required to dig deep into his emotional reservoirs later on.
The single-room setting makes it all feel a bit stage-bound, as does the script, which tends to leap without notice from Nancy’s personal journey into a broader conversation about sex and sex-workers, but Thompson is as compelling as ever as she charts Nancy’s long-delayed voyage of discovery.
(cinema release)
