In some other—and no doubt lesser—movie, watching Emma Thompson saying things like “blowjob” and “doggy style” while playing a prim, retired religious education teacher might simply be a gassy joke. But in Good Luck to You, Leo Grande (Hulu, June 17) the gag is more softly stated. It is, yes, a little amusing to hear this dowdy lady, Nancy, say such things. But she kind of knows that—while the man she’s saying them to, the titular sex worker played by Daryl McCormack, steadfastly refuses to let her make a mockery of herself.

Such is the gentility of director Sophie Hyde and screenwriter Katy Brand’s film, a positivity-minded depiction of sexual awakening, and a reconsideration of who gets to experience such a thing. Nancy (not her real name) has hired Leo (not his, either) because her husband has died and she is trying to make up for lost time. Her married sex life was prosaic to the point of near nonexistence, a dutiful chore that was entirely unexploratory—and ever unfulfilling for Nancy. Leo has met with clients like her before; he’s trained to say the right things at the right time, and to guide his client toward the contracted deed at a comfortable pace. 

Despite his competent maneuvering, though, Nancy bristles and demurs. She stalls. Which leads the film—largely set in one hotel room over a number of sessions—to its lengthy jags of conversation. Nancy tries to suss out the person behind the Adonis for hire, while he does his noble best to help her drop her inhibitions and give in to what she so craves. The film’s talk is clever, shrewd; Brand is careful to shade Nancy somewhere between sad-sack lonelyheart and uptight, conservative snob. She’s a little of both of those things, but mostly she is a more universally relatable type: someone longing to know themselves in a way they have never allowed before. 

In that way, Good Luck to You, Leo Grande is a movie about time and aging as much it is about sex, a soft encouragement to those in the audience who, like Nancy, feel too committed—or condemned—to the limits of their life to seek out something new. We don’t see the moments before the hotel room, what came before the appointment was booked. But we can imagine it was done nervously, after much deliberation and doubt. It’s okay that Nancy is scared, the film reassures, though that fear must also consider the other person involved.

Sometimes Nancy doesn’t, which is when the film gets more prickly, more serious. It’s a hard thing for a person of her generation—or, really, a lot of generations—to comprehend that Leo is not in this line of work because of some litany of tragedy, that he eagerly enjoys his profession no matter the client. Of course, that’s not entirely true. Surely there are struggles in the work, and a sad enough backstory for Leo is eventually revealed. But the film keeps itself in human balance, making neither cautionary tale nor inhuman sex god out of this kind, intuitive young man. 

That balance is well struck by the thoughtful writing and direction, and by McCormack, whose devastating good looks and saucy-serene comportment carry with them a faint note of sadness. He holds his own quite capably against the force that is Emma Thompson—though I shouldn’t say against, as the two actors are in fluid, reactive harmony with one another throughout. 

Small as Good Luck to You, Leo Grande may be in its cinematic dimensions, Thompson’s performance is a big one, loquacious and multifaceted and unsparing in its let-it-all-hang-out-there frankness. She’s a marvel. There is nudity and sex—of the sort that we’d maybe once have patronizingly called brave—but it is held, stylistically and smartly, for a crucial moment late in the film. The point isn’t to gawk or leer. This is the culmination of Nancy stepping outside of herself—or rather, more fully into herself. The sex is her reward for that effort, not really the audience’s. We’re invited in, but only to see what kind of release and freedom may await us should we try to attend to our own unrealized passions. 

Which don’t have to be sexual. Good Luck to You, Leo Grande is specifically about sex, more specifically about an older woman discovering an aspect of life that she long denied, with the stern abetment of the world around her. From a few steps back, though, the movie could also be about travel, about mending a relationship with a loved one, about writing a novel, about learning to paddle board. And it offers something of a generational olive branch, showing that the more open, freer young people of today aren’t to be warily judged or bitterly envied. Maybe they’re onto something in all their sensitive understandings of social conditions that have hampered so many people for so long. We can learn from them, or see in them an example—something Nancy never seems to have thought about her own students, or her children.

The politics of the movie are a little tricky, to be sure. Maybe trickier than the movie is really willing to confront. There will no doubt be some people who see the film and find its power structure, and its arguments, too lopsided, too blithe about Leo and all he’s carried with him into these trysts. On my second viewing, though, I was most struck by how generous Leo Grande is, how open to discourse and difference. It’s a movie about private encounters that just may be a public good: sex ed, or life ed, for grownups.