Starring: Emma Thompson and Daryl McCormack
Distributor: Roadshow Films
Runtime: 97 mins. Reviewed in Aug 2022
Reviewer: Peter W Sheehan
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This British sex comedy-drama takes place in a rented hotel room. A middle-age woman, recently widowed, hires a young sex worker. The film confronts the complexities of intimate human connection in multiple, and challenging, ways.
The film is written by Katy Brand, and is directed by Sophie Hyde. It offers trenchant comment on masculinity and femininity, and the ways both can be expressed. Emma Thompson plays Nancy Stokes, a 55-year-old retired widow, who has lost her husband. Two years after her husband’s death, Nancy hires a young adult sex worker (Daryl McCormack), by the name of ‘Leo Grande’, to spend the night with her. She yearns for a human connection that her deceased husband was never able, or willing to provide, and she hires him indulgently.
Nancy welcomes Leo and explains to him that her sex life has not been fulfilling. She is acutely conscious of her age and physical appearance, and tells Leo she doesn’t want to establish a deceitful connection with him. Both Nancy and Leo, however, don’t use their real names, and the truth behind their identity is an issue for both of them. Nancy talks with Leo about her husband and her children, and how life has disappointed her. She was a religious education teacher, and she is unhappy about the expectations she had of others. Leo responds by sharing details of his own life and says that he hides from his mother the fact that he is a sex industry worker – his mother believes he is an oil-rig worker, and Leo expresses no shame or regret about what he does. Nancy and Leo have four sessions together, before Nancy says goodbye to Leo using the words of the film’s title. Throughout the film, Leo is confident, outgoing, and open, whereas Nancy is insecure, reserved, and wants to hide the negative perceptions she has of herself.
In a film of this nature, sexual activity is obviously a main theme, but the film’s classification rating says something a little different. This is a film that has not been classified as MA15+ (though it should be), or R, but at the lower level of M. Intimate human interaction is the film’s major theme and both Emma Thomson and Daryl McCormack handle the demands of their roles sensitively. The film is in no way concerned with pornographic depictions of sexual activity. It glamorises prostitution, however, which largely reflects how charismatically and vividly Daryl McCormack plays Leo, and it throws its focus on sexual self-fulfilment, rather than sexual satisfaction as an integral component of a meaningful and committed relationship.
As their time together and the sharing of their lives increase, Leo is angered by Nancy’s invasion of his privacy, and tells Nancy more about his mother disowning him; and Nancy projects moral reservations onto Leo, who rejects them. In the fourth session of their time together, Nancy and Leo part, understanding each other in a way not possible when they first met. The film ends with Nancy admiring her naked body in a full-length mirror. The film is extraordinarily frank about sex, and places human emotions in a context that Hyde tries to direct non-judgmentally. This is a movie with fearlessly raw performances, and the film engenders insights into human connection, that are sharp-edged, if not entirely realistic.
Thompson gives an excellent portrayal of an older woman insecurely forging a connection with a younger man, and the film canvasses themes rarely seen in movies, such as the positivity of sex and the experience of pleasure for women. Significantly, the film indicates that neither Nancy nor Leo want power or special influence over the other. The movie is a strong antidote to sexist depictions of males who misrepresent their authority and ‘influence’, for sex with women, younger than themselves.
This is a two-character film about an older woman discovering aspects of life that she feels she has been denied. It explores human differences narrowly, but thoughtfully, and locates them through human vulnerability. The movie subtly targets social and sexual misconceptions that underlie the power dynamic in intimate situations, that is often depicted and celebrated in other films.
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