Nancy, projecting her own moral reservations onto Leo, sometimes goes too far in interrogating him about his profession. Their dialogue builds up a suitably erotic rhythm it’s all about give and take, back and forth, the satisfaction of curiosity, the delineation and occasional transgression of boundaries. (The fourth act, in particular, leaves no point unaddressed.) But Hyde stages it all with an unfussy elegance that serves the material, and any lingering creakiness is dispelled by Thompson and McCormack, who always seem to be playing people rather than ideological mouthpieces. At times you can see the gears of Brand’s script grinding away, the carefully engineered pivots from one point or revelation to the next. If that makes it sound stagy and even didactic - you could certainly imagine it working well as a play - well, the message is a worthy one, and all PSAs should be this pleasurable. “Good Luck to You, Leo Grande” thus achieves both the intimacy of a chamber piece and the directness of a public service announcement, one aimed at promoting sex/body positivity and debunking retrograde attitudes about women’s pleasure and the nature of sex work. But Leo, waving this nonsense aside, reminds her that there’s nothing abnormal, let alone shameful, about expressing something so basic as desire. Nancy knows what she wants and is terrified by how badly she wants it, and she spends much of the early going trying to talk herself out of it, fretting about how much older she is than Leo and how repelled he must be by her sags and wrinkles. (Nancy used to teach religious studies, a calling that seems not to have exactly tamed her libido.) Thompson, skilled at both effrontery and anxiety, mines that tension brilliantly. Still, those inhibitions persist, along with all the assumptions and prejudices that come with a socially conservative middle-class English background.
You could say that Brand and director Sophie Hyde take their time getting to the good stuff, except that the talk is good stuff, full of erotic tension, playful humor and candid insight into the erogenous zones of the mind. And during most of the four separate appointments that make up Katy Brand’s script, Leo and Nancy are engaged in long bouts of verbal foreplay, sharing intimate secrets and navigating a raft of fears and insecurities (most but not all of them Nancy’s). Leo has a way with words, a flair for language that endears him to Nancy, a retired high school teacher. And it knows that when it comes to sex, the tongue can be an instrument of both pleasure and persuasion.
No need to get your mind out of the gutter this movie would prefer it stay there. Leo will need more than luck to put nervous Nancy at ease he’ll need every tool in his kit, the most impressive and dexterous of which may be his tongue. Leo Grande (Daryl McCormack) is a sex worker in his 20s, and while he’s had many clients of varying persuasions and proclivities, he has never encountered one quite like Nancy Stokes (Emma Thompson), the prim, anxious 55-year-old widow who’s booked him for a high-priced session. Much earlier than that, however, you might find yourself expressing some version of the same sentiment. The long, oddly charming title of “Good Luck to You, Leo Grande” is a line of dialogue spoken near the end of this not-too-long and thoroughly charming British comedy.