Good Luck to You, Leo Grande
グッド・ラック・トゥ・ユー、レオ・グランデ
The Moonlight essay
CinemaGood Luck to You, Leo Grande and the Permission to WantRead the essayDiscussed in the Journal
JournalBefore Your First Evening: What Actually HappensStoryline
The whole story, ending included.
A retired RE teacher hires a sex worker to find out what she has been missing; a two-hander that is mostly conversation, and a mirror.
Nancy Stokes, a retired religious-education teacher widowed two years before, has booked a hotel room and a young sex worker who calls himself Leo Grande. She is anxious, ashamed of her body and embarrassed to be there at all. Her husband was her only lover in thirty-one years, the sex was dutiful and never varied, and she has never had an orgasm. She has promised herself never to fake one again. Leo is unhurried and kind, and unashamed of his work; he says his mother thinks he works on an oil rig. When Nancy tells him about a moment of desire she felt as a teenager on holiday in Greece, he kisses her.
At the second meeting she arrives with a list of things she has never done. She is brisk and tense, and a call from her daughter makes it worse, until Leo gets her dancing and gets her to look at her body differently. They argue about her old pupils' short skirts, and he tells her that he takes real pleasure in his clients' pleasure. At the third meeting she admits she has looked him up online and found his real name, Connor. He is furious that she has crossed the line he keeps between his work and his life. When she presses him to be honest with his family, he tells her the truth: his mother disowned him at fifteen and now walks past him in the street.
Nancy books a fourth meeting, in the hotel café. She thanks Leo for what has changed in her, tells him her real name, Susan Robinson, and says he is the only true adventure she has ever had. Leo has told his brother what he does, and they are back in touch. The waitress, Becky, is a former pupil who remembers Nancy calling her and her friends sluts for their skirts; Nancy apologises and tells her who Leo is. Upstairs, in their last session, she works through the rest of her list. Watching Leo cross the room, she brings herself to orgasm, the first of her life. She tells him she will not need to book him again, and they part warmly. Alone, she stands before the mirror and looks at her naked body.
Starring
Emma Thompsonas Nancy Stokes / Susan Robinson
A widowed retired teacher who has never had an orgasm and hires Leo, under a false name, to find out what she has missed.
Nancy Stokes / Susan Robinson’s story
Nancy has booked the hotel room and the young man, and nearly loses her nerve. Her late husband was her only lover, and she tells Leo she has never had an orgasm and will not fake one again. At the second meeting she brings a list of things she has never done, and is stiff until he gets her dancing. At the third she admits she has found his real name and presses him about his family; he walks out. In the café at the fourth she gives him her own name, Susan Robinson, and apologises to a former pupil she once shamed. Watching him cross the room, she brings herself to orgasm for the first time. She tells him she will not book him again, and looks at her naked body in the mirror.
Daryl McCormackas Leo Grande / Connor
A young sex worker, skilled and proud of his work, who keeps his real name and his estranged family away from clients.
Leo Grande / Connor’s story
Leo arrives unhurried and kind, at ease with what he does; his mother, he says, thinks he works on an oil rig. With Nancy he coaxes, listens and argues back, defending the girls whose short skirts she once condemned, and he tells her he takes real pleasure in his clients' pleasure. When she reveals she has found his real name, Connor, he is furious that she has crossed his line, then tells her the truth: his mother disowned him at fifteen, tells people he is dead and walks past him in the street. By their fourth meeting he has told his younger brother, a soldier, what he does, and they are back in touch. After their last session they part warmly.
Isabella Laughlandas Becky
A waitress at the hotel café, once one of Nancy's pupils, who still remembers being shamed by her.
Why it matters
Good Luck to You, Leo Grande puts two subjects in a hotel room that cinema rarely takes seriously: the sexual pleasure of an older woman, and sex work as work. Nancy has spent a lifetime as a dutiful wife, a strict teacher and a disappointed mother, and nobody, least of all she, ever asked what she wanted. The film follows her learning to say it aloud, to a man she is paying. Leo is not rescued or pitied, and his boundaries matter: the film's sharpest scene is the one in which she breaks them. Writing for RogerEbert.com, Sheila O'Malley praised its frankness about sex for older women and its lack of judgement about sex work. Its last image, a woman looking at her own body without apology, carries the argument. Pleasure was never reserved for the young, and shame is something taught.