‘Good Luck to You, Leo Grande’ Review: Emma Thompson Gets In Touch With Her Sensual Side in a Gripping Two-Hander

variety.com:

Amy Nicholson In the opening sequence of Sophie Hyde’s riveting “Good Luck to You, Leo Grande,” a suave young man (Daryl McCormack) steps out of an ice cream parlor, catches a mint candy in his mouth, and swings around a street pole like a hipster Gene Kelly.

The Irishman is confidently cool — and not quite himself. He’s getting into character as Leo Grande, a charming sex worker who sells the Leo Grande Fantasy: a “service,” he calls it, where he gives paying customers exactly what they need, be it physical release, conversation or, for one client, dressing like a cat.

But Katy Brand’s screenplay is only focused on Leo’s interactions with one customer: Nancy (Emma Thompson), a widowed religious studies teacher pacing a blandly attractive hotel room, panicked that she’s made a mistake.

What’s her fantasy, Leo asks. Nancy chokes on her own desires. “To have sex? Tonight? With you? Do you mind?” The set-up of this intimate talkie sounds like middle-aged wish fulfillment — “How Teach Got Her Groove Back” — with Nancy checking off her handwritten list of erotic firsts courtesy of a kind and generous twenty-something she calls a “sexual saint.” (She even pinches Leo’s arm to prove he’s real.) But Hyde’s insight is that Leo isn’t real.