Good Luck to You Leo Grande
Cert 18 | ★★★★★

Emma Thompson (The Remains of The Day, Sense and Sensibility, Love Actually) gives one of her best and most memorable performances yet in this engaging two-hander from director Sophie Hyde (Animals) and comedian-turned-screenwriter Katy Brand. The film, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, charts the intimate relationship between a 55-year-old widow and a 20-something male sex worker, covering a series of clandestine meetings that take place in a hotel.

Widowed pensioner Nancy Stokes (Thompson) feels unfulfilled sexually and intellectually and seeks to remedy that by hiring the services of Leo Grande (Peaky Blinders alum Daryl McCormack), a young male sex worker. Despite his deep fascination with his new client, Leo makes it abundantly clear that he wishes to keep their relationship strictly professional.

Over several meetings and hours of conversations, Nancy finds herself more and more attached to her young companion who seemingly seems to feel the same way about her.

Things come to a head, however, when personal boundaries are breached and secrets are revealed, leading Leo to put his foot down and threaten to end their arrangement.

Hyde’s last film was the flawed, but well-acted, adaptation of Emma Jane Unsworth’s 2014 best-selling novel Animals. Here she delivers a brilliantly understated ode to female sexual empowerment that goes further than any other film on the subject has gone before. Much has been made in the press of Thompson’s daring full-frontal nude scene, but perhaps the most daring thing about the film is its unabashedly feminist approach to sex after 50 for women.

Elevated by Katy Brand’s expertly paced dialogue and gorgeously layered storytelling style, Good Luck To You Leo Grande manages to successfully break away from its slightly stagey two-hander format to deliver an engaging, funny and hugely affecting drama comedy.

Thompson puts in a fearless and, typically for her, disarming turn as a woman who has to learn to love everything about herself in order to reclaim her sexuality.

McCormack oozes confidence and charm all the while managing to avoid coming across as annoying or domineering. The result is truly a match made in heaven.

It’s not every day we are presented with a piece of filmmaking that is so set on rewriting the rule book on how women of a certain age are viewed, and for that reason alone, Good Luck To You Leo Grande will prove to be an essential work for many years to come.

This is a real eye-opener and yet another fantastic performance by Emma Thompson who seemingly can’t put a single foot wrong. Genuinely thrilling.