This film is most emphatically adults-only.
(In fact, you kids shouldn’t even read this review. Check out my comments about Lightyear instead.)
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| Getting Nancy (Emma Thompson) into bed requires considerable patience and gentle persuasion by sex worker Leo (Daryl McCormack). But, once there, will she succumb to the moment? |
I was surprised to learn that Leo Grande didn’t originate as a play, as it would have been perfect on a minimal stage. Regardless, this intimate 97-minute drama never is boring; stars Emma Thompson and Daryl McCormack make the most of Brand’s thoughtful, tender, sweetly sensitive and frequently amusing dialogue.
The premise is simple: Retired teacher and recent widow Nancy Stokes (Thompson), attempting to compensate for a sexually dull marriage, arranges a hotel room session with sex worker Leo (McCormack). She thinks she wants to experience the sort of all-stops-out libidinous pleasure that her husband never deigned to provide.
But when Nancy answers the soft knock and allows Leo into the room … well, best intentions and a lifetime of fantasies aren’t nearly the same as being confronted by this attractive, well-muscled and instinctively sensitive stranger.
What follows is thoroughly charming … and, as time passes, increasingly verbally explicit.
Thompson excels at poor Nancy’s initial blend of shyness, flustered embarrassment and second thoughts. (Heck, third, fourth and fifth thoughts!) Thompson plays it perfectly, her wary, closed-off body language matched by Nancy’s nervous non-sequiturs and an absolutely inability to look Leo directly in the eye.
Her stream-of-consciousness comments often are funny: gently amusing at the very least, and possibly hilarious (depending upon the sexual awareness of the individual viewer). Much of what Nancy eventually reveals likely will sound and feel familiar to many women; Brand clearly knows her way around the (often unfulfilled) female sexual experience.
As a means of keeping her barriers up, Nancy also wants to know more about Leo as a person … which is to say, what his life is like when he isn’t, um, on call. Leo adeptly deflects such inquiries, always with a warm smile; such inquiries would destroy what is, in effect, role play with rigid, unspoken rules.
Leo is fascinating. No matter how anxious Nancy’s tics and twitches, his responses are calm, friendly and compassionate; he absolutely doesn’t judge. His smile is affable, his body language comforting and non-threatening. Leo clearly has been down this road many times before, but there’s also no suggestion that this prompts him to “categorize” his newest client; he grants Nancy the respect accorded a unique soul attempting to make peace with an unsatisfied aspect of her being.
Leo is, it must be said, an impressively skilled psychologist.
(One can’t help wishing it were possible to schedule regular appointments with professional therapists who offer such, ah, side benefits; I suspect the world would be a lot less uptight.)
Granted, all of this is Brand’s fabricated notion of an idealized encounter, but the emotions, dialogue and behavior — by both Nancy and Leo — feel authentic. Thompson and McCormack make it so, but this also bespeaks research; the press notes acknowledge that Hyde, Brand and McCormack consulted extensively with practicing sex workers.
McCormack is impressively nuanced. Watch his gaze, mouth and body language, as he responds — often silently — to what Thompson says and does. He makes Leo a preternaturally astute observer, which (of course) is just what Nancy needs.
The result is a graceful, verbally seductive pas de deux that feels like a carefully choreographed dance (which, in a way, it is). The atmosphere becomes increasingly personal, almost painfully so; we viewers begin to feel like uncomfortable voyeurs.
How far will Nancy go? Will she succumb to the moment, or — in hesitation — remain sexually lost?
Brand’s script is divided into three acts, the distinctions of which cannot be discussed without revealing too much.
Isabella Laughland pops up, during the epilogue, as one of Nancy’s former students: a character inserted to offer commentary at a key moment.
Two-handers are notoriously difficult to pull off successfully, particularly on film. (They work far better on a stage, where the actors’ physical presence — and intensity — help considerably.) Writers and directors always strive for a Before Sunrise or My Dinner with Andre, but too frequently wind up with an All the Old Knives.
Hyde, Brand, Thompson and McCormack make Leo Grande one of the better entries in this little sub-genre. The sure sign of a successful film is a viewer’s desire to spend more time with its characters, and that’s definitely the case here.
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