The Lovely Leo Grande

“A good movie makes the audience feel like they have journeyed with the characters.”

– Rich Moore

Oh, how I WISH I could have, ahem, journeyed with Leo Grande in the film, “Good Luck to you, Leo Grande.”

Me a few million other women, I suspect 🙂

Oh. My. Good. Golly.

For as much as this film is about sex, it’s also very much about beauty: seeing the beauty in another human being and seeing the beauty in our own bodies – which tends to be quite a challenge for many people, I suspect.

Here’s a quick synopsis of the film:

“Emma Thompson plays Nancy, retired and recently widowed, vividly unhappy, and at the limit of her ability to endure her own unhappiness. Completely breaking her strict patterns, she hires a sex worker named Leo (Daryl McCormack), whom she somehow found on the internet. She rents a posh hotel room, where he joins her.”

– Sheila O’Malley, Ebert.com

I watched the film with my 24-year old niece, Emily (my roomie for a year) and although there were a few awkward moments, most of the time we alternated between laughing and well, not drooling, exactly…but close 🙂

“It’s a relief to see a film so frank about sex,” writes Ebert.com film critic, Sheila O’Malley, “and so open to sex’s complexities, especially when so much of current cinema is sexless to a disheartening degree. “Leo Grande” cares about sex for older women, and not just sex, but the baggage associated with sex, and how that baggage robs us of joy and fulfillment.”

And much of that baggage has to do with how a woman perceives her own body. Which is why Leo Grande’s services are very much needed. He certainly has a challenging client in Nancy…but he does his job very well. For Leo isn’t just physically beautiful and smolderingly sensuous; he is a kind, thoughtful, patient, and beautiful soul who clearly respects women. And that, of course, is beyond sexy.

This 2-min clip is my favourite scene in the film:

Like Nancy Stokes – and many of us – I live far too much in my head…and not nearly enough in my body.

This film reminded me of that…and gave me a much-needed nudge to start making some changes in my personal life 🙂

Although this film celebrates the conventional physical beauty of Leo Grande, it also has the courage to explore the inner and outer beauty of Nancy Stokes…as seen through the eyes of our harshest critic on the planet: the mirror.

There is a powerful moment near the end of the film when Nancy – and by extension, Emma Thompson – looks in the mirror at her naked body and truly sees her beautiful self.

I love how this film had the courage and strength to show a woman finally learning to see the beauty in her own body through the eyes of her own soul… instead of through the warped lens of what society has relentlessly conditioned us to believe is beautiful.

Because Emma Thompson is right: when we look in the mirror, we need to love what we see – not because another person, or society, deems us “beautiful” but because we deem ourselves beautiful…exactly as we are.

In addition to the hours of pleasure 🙂 I think that was the greatest gift that Leo gave Nancy.

Maryanne Pope is the author of “A Widow’s Awakening.” She also writes screenplays, playscripts and blogs. She is the CEO of Pink Gazelle Productions and a co-founder of the John Petropoulos Memorial Fund. To receive Maryanne’s blog, “Weekly Words of Wisdom,” please subscribe here.