There have been some promising performances so far from the likes of Julianne Moore, Bill Nighy and a couple still to come later, but the wow factor really hit me in seeing Emma Thompson in the British film Good Luck To You, Leo Grande, premiering today at Sundance, where to put it mildly, she knocks it out of the park.
Her co-star Daryl McCormack in this two-hander is equally good in the movie which centers on a 60ish widowed mother of two and religious studies teacher who hires a sex worker for a tryst in a hotel room.
Thompson plays Nancy Stokes (real name? don’t think so ) whose nice but uneventful marriage of 31 years to a good but unexciting man ended with his death a couple of years ago.This is a character study for both Thompson and McCormack to dive into with abandon , and that they do erasing inhibitions physically, but adding them up in other ways that makes this sexual cat and mouse game never less than fascinating to watch where it takes us – and them – next. It is a movie about shedding the past, forging intimacy on more than one level, making human connections, and discovering a whole new you.For Thompson she better be prepared for another awards go-round come a year from now.