You've never seen a movie like Good Luck to You, Leo Grande.

On paper, Good Luck to You, Leo Grande shouldn't work.

The film predominately takes place within the walls of a bland hotel room with just two players on the scene, and our emotional attachment to both them and the plot is hinged on an endless stream of dialogue. 

Dialogue that yes, is peppered with sex scenes, but not enough to keep you hanging around for dessert if that was the only menu you wished to order from.

And yet, Good Luck to You, Leo Grande is an extraordinary film, one of the best to be released this year.

Thanks to a witty and emotionally charged script penned by English comedian and actress Katy Brand with expert direction by Australian filmmaker Sophie Hyde, Good Luck to You, Leo Grande denies you the opportunity to pull your eyes away from the story of a retired religious studies teacher Nancy Stokes who hires a young sex worker named Leo Grande. 

In the hands of dual Academy Award winner Dame Emma Thompson, Nancy's compelling story plays out on screen like a fantasy that also hits a little too close to home. This exact situation may be unfamiliar territory to many of us, but once Nancy begins to speak about her feelings of loss, desire and inadequacy, they feel like pages lifted from our life stories. 

At the outset of the film, Nancy explains she hired Leo Grande after feeling like she had lived a repressed life with limited sexual experience.

Her husband, who died two years previously, was the only man she about had ever been with and, as she explains to Leo, favoured only the missionary position. Believing anything else, including oral sex, would be demeaning to them both.

Watch the trailer for Good Luck to You, Leo Grande right here. Post continues after video. 

The interactions between the characters then go on to play out like a well-crafted dance as Nancy and Leo, played superbly by Peaky Blinders and Pixie actor Daryl McCormack, slowly tick off Nancy's bucket list of sexual acts over a series of increasingly intimate meetings in the hotel room. 

Speaking to Mamamia, director Sophie Hyde, known for her films 52 Tuesdays and Animals and Emma Thompson, whose iconic films include Sense and Sensibility, The Remains of the Day, Love Actually and the Harry Potter franchise said their desire to make the film was hinged on its ability to tell a series of stories that have historically been banished from conversations. 

“People have been very surprised by their own responses to our movie,” Sophie told Mamamia. “People come out of this movie really wanting to talk about their own lives. Both Emma and Daryl are putting their bodies, hearts and minds on the line for us to have stories like this."

“Within the movie, the relationship between Leo and Nancy is so interesting,” Emma continued. “All because she’s paying him to desire her, and she believes that he never could. 

"Then as it progresses throughout the movie, you see that desirability is not about what you look like. It's about what you've exchanged. It's about your intimate exchange and the way in which you've talked to one another. It's nothing to do with their bodies."

"In the hands of dual Academy Award winner Dame Emma Thompson, Nancy's compelling story plays out on screen like a fantasy that also hits a little too close to home." Image: Roadshow Australia Within the film, Nancy's own insecurities about her body are firmly tied to her belief that she doesn't deserve sexual pleasure, a storyline that builds to a quiet yet powerful moment where she stands in front of a mirror completely naked and just takes in her reflection. 

“I feel really emotional talking about it, like I might cry," Sophie said, while acknowledging how the film opens up internal wounds around body image. "Why have we done this to each other, where we can't look in a mirror? It truly makes me devastated. 

"For us it was never important to make Nancy love her own body, she was looking at her body with newfound joy because of what it could do. That was the crucial part of the film, to look at the underlying shame people have about their bodies, and how we can shift some of that shame. Nancy begins the movie by looking at herself in the mirror and thinking about how she presents herself to the world. 

"But at the end of the film, she's looking in that mirror for a very different reason."

"Within the film Nancy's own insecurities about her body are firmly tied to her belief that she doesn't deserve sexual pleasure." Image: Roadshow Australia. Good Luck to You, Leo Grande also taps into a much-needed conversation about sex workers and how they have been presented within popular culture. There's either the Pretty Woman saviour fantasy or they are presented as a dangerous cautionary tale.

They are also predominantly female characters, which is a stereotype Sophie Hyde wished to challenge.

"We talked to a lot of sex workers before making the movie," Sophie said when explaining how they built the character of Leo Grande. "We were looking for a variety of stories and what we found was that it is just like any other job, in that people have had different experiences with it. There are so many great stories to tell, just like in any workforce.

"Then we found a few people who became very significant consultants for us, and they all came from sex worker-led organisations in various countries. They all had a similarity to Leo in some form, which was a desire to be really good at the work that they did. It's a unique skill to sit opposite another human and try to work out what it is they need without putting all of their own baggage onto it. 

"I really enjoyed that we got to create this character of Leo, who's very good at his job," she continued. "Yes, he's enacting a fantasy for somebody, but that doesn't make it not real. He's also putting himself out there, even though he has boundaries. As filmmakers, that's very exciting for us, because that's what performance really is. 

"The sex workers that we worked with were instrumental in helping us to create a very specific character because we were not trying to show all parts of sex work, that can't be done. Instead, we were trying to tap into something that hasn't been seen much in the tropes of sex work that we see on screen all the time."

"Good Luck to You, Leo Grande taps into a much-needed conversation about sex workers and how they have been presented within popular culture." Image: Roadshow Australia. While it does integrate some truly heavy themes, Good Luck to You, Leo Grande can also swing from being wickedly funny to deliciously sensual and back again with ease, and you'll find yourself leaning into every moment Nancy and Leo spend together. 

And when it comes to what Emma and Sophie want audiences to take away from their film, neither of them has any doubt about what they want you to feel. 

"Release," Emma says without a moment's hesitation. "Release of tension and newfound access to pleasure. That's what I've seen people experience, anyway."

"I would say the takeaway is that pleasure is a wonderful thing," Sophie said. "It's part of our life so there's no reason not to have it. It's not hedonistic, and it's nothing to be ashamed of. It's a wonderful thing and we should all have."

Good Luck to You, Leo Grande is in cinemas now. 

Laura Brodnik is Mamamia's Head of Entertainment and host of The Spill podcast. You can follow her on Instagram here.

Feature image: Roadshow Australia.