Movie · 2022 · Romance, Drama · 1h 37m · R · English
Curator score: 6.8/10 (133.3K ratings)
It's never too late to try something new.
Overview
Nancy Stokes, a retired schoolteacher, is pretty sure she has never had good sex. Now that her husband has died, she is determined to take a tour of sexual vistas that until now she has only imagined. She even has a plan; it involves an anonymous hotel room, and a sex worker who calls himself Leo Grande.
Ratings
Curator score: 6.8/10
IMDb: 7.2/10
Letterboxd: 3.62/5
Rotten Tomatoes: 94%
Metacritic: 78
TMDB: 7.0/10
Director
Katy Brand, Sophie Hyde
Production
Cornerstone Films, Genesius Pictures, Align
Cast
Emma Thompson, Daryl McCormack, Isabella Laughland, Les Mabaleka, Lennie Beare, Carina Lopes, Charlotte Ware
Where to watch
Hulu
Curator Review
Verdict
A smart, intimate two-hander that turns a hotel-room hookup into a tender, funny, and surprisingly moving conversation about desire, shame, aging, and self-acceptance. It’s especially rewarding if you like performance-driven chamber pieces that use sex as a doorway into character rather than as spectacle.
Best for
viewers who like dialogue-driven character studies
fans of mature romance with emotional honesty
people interested in sex-positive stories about aging
audiences who appreciate strong two-hander performances
viewers open to a gentle, theatrical structure
Skip if
you want explicit eroticism over emotional conversation
you dislike single-location, stage-like storytelling
you prefer plot-heavy romance or big dramatic turns
you’re uncomfortable with frank discussions of sex and body image
Overview
Good Luck to You, Leo Grande is a compact, sharply observed film that finds its power in candor. What could have been a gimmick premise becomes a humane, funny, and quietly radical portrait of a woman reclaiming her own desire later in life. Emma Thompson gives the kind of performance that keeps revealing new shades of embarrassment, longing, and liberation, while Daryl McCormack brings warmth and ease without flattening Leo into a fantasy figure.
Worth noting
The movie works best as a conversation piece: two people circling each other, testing boundaries, and slowly replacing performance with honesty. Its hotel-room setting gives it a playlike intimacy, but the direction keeps the emotional movement alive and precise. It’s less interested in heat than in the complicated feelings around wanting to be seen, touched, and understood.
Bottom line
There are moments where the script leans a little too neatly into its thesis, but the film’s empathy is hard to resist. It’s a thoughtful, sex-positive drama about shame, age, and the possibility of change, and it lands because it treats pleasure as something serious, not frivolous. The result is modest in scale but unusually generous in spirit.
Top Letterboxd reviews
demi adejuyigbe (4.5★) · 2050 likes
I loved this!! A really great twist on the romcom, structured like a play (in the right way.) The first movie I’ve seen that really nails the idea that sex workers often act as as therapists for their clients and argues for the decrim of sex work by depicting that. Feel a little iffy on an element of the last half that feels like a damaging stereotype but I understand it’s use in the story, I guess. Sally Rooney’s finest work!! (I don’t think Sally Rooney had anything to do with this but there’s a hot Irish guy in it and he’s fucking. Rooney mode.)
Sammy (3.5★) · 1927 likes
A truly lovely movie about Emma Thompson coming to terms with the fact that she’s hot
Ella Kemp (4★) · 1738 likes
The sexiest thing you can be with another person is plain and kind and true about what you want, what you need. Sex can electrify tiny moments but also quietly damage a whole lifetime - even/especially when it’s because simply just a little lifeless, a bit lacking. Daryl McCormack is incredible but, and I mean this very bluntly, you’ve never seen Emma Thompson like this and thank fucking god we have her
Bryan Espitia (3.5★) · 1224 likes
Okay now where’s the movie about the guy who pays Leo Grande to dress up as a cat and then ignore him for an hour, that sounds very interesting
2011 · Drama, Romance · 1h 38m · R · Curator 7.5/10 (17.7K ratings) · Where to watch: Amazon Prime Video, fuboTV, Philo, OVID, Amazon Prime Video with Ads
A beautifully acted study of passion, shame, and the costs of emotional dependency.