On paper, Good Luck to You, Leo Grande shouldn't work.
The film predominately takes place within the walls of a bland hotel room with just two players on the scene, and our emotional attachment to both them and the plot is hinged on an endless stream of dialogue.
Dialogue that yes, is peppered with sex scenes, but not enough to keep you hanging around for dessert if that was the only menu you wished to order from.
And yet, Good Luck to You, Leo Grande is an extraordinary film, one of the best to be released this year.
Thanks to a witty and emotionally charged script penned by English comedian and actress Katy Brand with expert direction by Australian filmmaker Sophie Hyde, Good Luck to You, Leo Grande denies you the opportunity to pull your eyes away from the story of a retired religious studies teacher Nancy Stokes who hires a young sex worker named Leo Grande.
In the hands of dual Academy Award winner Dame Emma Thompson, Nancy's compelling story plays out on screen like a fantasy that also hits a little too close to home. This exact situation may be unfamiliar territory to many of us, but once Nancy begins to speak about her feelings of loss, desire and inadequacy, they feel like pages lifted from our life stories.
At the outset of the film, Nancy explains she hired Leo Grande after feeling like she had lived a repressed life with limited sexual experience.
Her husband, who died two years previously, was the only man she about had ever been with and, as she explains to Leo, favoured only the missionary position. Believing anything else, including oral sex, would be demeaning to them both.
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