“Good Luck to You, Leo Grande” (M) **** and a half

MAINSTREAM cinema is, perhaps understandably, a little coy about women’s sexuality as a central topic.

“Good Luck to You, Leo Grande” spends 97 minutes in conversation between Nancy (Emma Thompson) and Leo (Daryl McCormack) each concealing the fact that they are using a fake name. 

And what are they discussing? Nancy, a widow who has been with only her late husband has hired sex worker Leo to help her finally discover what she knows has been missing. 

Now, desperate to explore everything, she confesses that she’s never had an orgasm and believes she’s not capable of one. Teaching religion, she has spent her adult life deprecating the sex industry and yet, here she is, needing its services.

During four sessions, Leo calms her down and puts her at ease. She learns to relax and become self-confident, as they connect emotionally and sexually in a way that she never thought possible, at least not for her.

That summarises the dramatic framework that writer Katy Brand and Australian-born director Sophie Hyde have brought to the screen. In a time when small, intelligent films are becoming increasingly few, one like this that dives headfirst into the psyche of a middle-aged woman, examining, in a straightforward and honest way, her fears, her insecurities and her desires, is more than a refreshing change. 

Indeed, it is an important venture that doesn’t cower behind a curtain of reticence to venture around anatomical bits that traditionally are seldom discussed and almost never displayed in cinemas.

Indeed, I commend the three-member panel of the Classification Review Board that classified “Good Luck to You, Leo Grande” as M with the consumer advice: “Sexual themes, sex scenes, nudity and coarse language”, which, in the panel’s opinion, the film’s narrative context justified.

It’s certainly not the first mainstream movie to acknowledge that women have orgasms. But it’s very likely the first to discuss them with this degree of honesty and truth.

And in my book Emma Thompson looks not only luminously lovely, her performance places her at the very apogee of her craft. 

At all cinemas