GOOD LUCK TO YOU, LEO GRANDE

Good Luck to You, Leo Grande, despite excellent performances by the leading duo, might have worked a lot better as a TV miniseries, a point highlighted by the film's chaptered structure.

As in most projects she's attached to, the best thing about Good Luck to You, Leo Grande is actress Emma Thompson.

Here she plays a widow who hires a sex worker to give her the one thing that has escaped her so far in life: an orgasm. If you are put off by the premise, don't be. The picture stays rather chaste in its depiction of and conversations about sex and all in all it doesn't have too many revelatory things to say about the subject.

In fact, Good Luck to You, Leo Grande might have worked a lot better as a TV miniseries, a point highlighted by the film's chaptered structure, which would have given more breathing room to the slowly developing connection between the two leads.

In its current form, that is the main weak link - along with its lack of visual oomph - which translates to a rushed, too neatly tied up and not always believable third act that positions sex work rather unnuanced as a nearly saint-like profession.

Still, Thompson keeps the whole thing more than watchable as she finds hidden depths in a middling script.

release: 2022

director: Sophie Hyde

starring: Emma Thompson, Daryl McCormack