Film

Good Luck to You, Leo Grande

Emma Thompson plays a widow in her seventies reclaiming pleasure on her own terms, hiring a sex worker to explore desire she's never experienced. It's tender, funny, and quietly radical—a film about consent, curiosity, and the life-changing power of being seen. For anyone who believes desire doesn't expire and that intimacy takes many forms.

TMDb rating3.5

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Calendar Girls2003

A group of older women shed their inhibitions to raise money for charity, discovering confidence and friendship along the way. Warm, funny, and genuinely moving about bodies, aging, and reclaiming agency.

But The emotional core gets buried under feel-good sentimentality; it never quite dares to be as bold as its premise suggests.

Calendar Girls poster

The Farewell2019

Awkwafina and Shawna Oh explore family secrets and generational rifts with intelligence and humour. Like Leo Grande, it's intimate, character-driven, and finds profound humanity in quiet moments.

But The pacing is deliberately slow and contemplative, which can feel static if you're expecting plot-driven drama.

The Farewell poster

Never Rarely Sometimes Always2020

A grief-stricken woman and a younger man form an unexpected connection. Tender and emotionally honest about desire, loneliness, and the ways we comfort each other across difference.

But It's obscure for a reason—understated to the point where some viewers will find it thin on narrative momentum.

Never Rarely Sometimes Always poster

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Licorice Pizza2021

Both centre an intergenerational relationship and ask what desire and connection can look like outside conventional frames.

Paul Thomas Anderson's portrait of a young man and older woman circling each other across 1970s Los Angeles. Like Leo Grande, it's about desire across an unconventional divide, and how we're all searching for someone to see us.

But Anderson's meandering style and the age gap might make you impatient; some will find the power dynamics troubling.

Licorice Pizza poster
More like this (8)

A Fish Called Wanda1988

Jamie Lee Curtis plays a woman who uses sex and intelligence as tools of power and liberation. Sharp, funny, and genuinely transgressive for its era about female desire and agency.

But The comedy doesn't always land, and what seemed transgressive in 1988 feels dated in places.

A Fish Called Wanda poster

The Dinner Party2020

A widow invites a younger man for dinner, and the evening becomes an exploration of loneliness, attraction, and vulnerability. Spare, intimate, and unafraid of awkwardness and desire.

But Very little happens; if you need plot, this will frustrate you.

The Dinner Party poster

About a Boy2002

A cynical man and a lonely woman find connection across an unexpected divide. It's warm without being saccharine, funny without dismissing the real loneliness underneath.

But The film is so committed to being likeable that it sometimes sidesteps genuine darkness.

About a Boy poster

Hope Springs2012

Meryl Streep and Tommy Lee Jones reignite desire in a long marriage, attending couples' therapy. It takes older sexuality seriously and finds both humour and tenderness in rediscovery.

But The emotional breakthroughs feel neat and resolved; it avoids the messiness that makes Leo Grande so compelling.

Hope Springs poster

Lost River2015

A woman supports her family through her beauty and sexuality on her own terms. Visually stunning and unafraid to explore desire, economics, and choice in a fractured America.

But It's oblique and symbolist; some will find it pretentious or narratively unclear.

Lost River poster

The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!1988

Not serious for a moment, but genuinely funny about sex, attraction, and bodies without shame. Sometimes you want to laugh instead of think, and this delivers.

But It's broad physical comedy; if you don't find that funny, you'll find it exhausting.

The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! poster

Bodywork2022

Where Leo Grande imagines an encounter, Bodywork documents the real lives and expertise of people who do this work.

A documentary series following sex workers in New Zealand with unflinching honesty and humour. Funny, explicit, and utterly humanizing—it shows the real conversations, choices, and care that Leo Grande only hints at.

But It's a documentary about sex work, so it's genuinely explicit; it's not fiction, and that rawness unsettles some viewers.

Bodywork poster

The Killing of a Sacred Deer2017

Both explore what happens when a widow lets a younger person into her controlled domestic world, and what is owed afterwards.

Yorgos Lanthimos's film about a widow and her children under threat from a mysterious young man. Unsettling, controlled, searching for what we owe to strangers. Like Leo Grande, it's about power, debt, and seeing someone fully.

But It's a thriller made of dread and silence, with sudden violence. If you're watching for warmth, you'll get the opposite.

The Killing of a Sacred Deer poster

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