Emma Thompson: “Does Anyone Know or Care if Middle-Aged Women Are Getting Any Sexual Satisfaction?”

Sexual assistance—why isn’t it on the National Health Service? Sex is free, natural, normal, delightful, good for us, and, as Leo says in the film, inaccessible to some for all kinds of perfectly valid reasons. It’s a public health issue.

The theme of women’s sex work was fascinating to me—like many of my generation, the idea of it being a chosen occupation rather than something awful one has been forced into by poverty or abusive power is very new and takes some getting used to. Largely, I suppose, because of the dangers. It’s all very well to agree upon boundaries, but to be alone in a room with a stronger human who can easily—very easily sometimes—hurt, rape, or kill you, is frightening. It remains frightening to me, although I also think that under the right circumstances—legal safeguards, decent clients, and so forth—it could be a very good job.

Is it partly that we don’t associate respect for one another with our sexual feelings? I think the root of it all (sorry) is that we simply do not respect our sexual desires. We easily joke about them—we easily make them the butt of our contempt, easily undermine their complexity, their radical nature (sometimes), even their humble need to exist often offends and disturbs us. But we aren’t listening.

Leo listens—he respects pleasure. He understands it takes many forms and none is anathema to him. He understands that he can make people feel better, he can improve their lives, and sometimes he can even release them from suffering. He teaches Nancy, in short, about the possible sanctity of sex work.

Before making Good Luck to You, Leo Grande, I had no idea how much I would learn about my attitude to my own body, to pleasure and to shame – how much I would laugh about the genuine silliness of so many of our responses to sexual pleasure, and how much I would cry about what is lost in life when it is repressed, ignored and punished.

I hope the film reaches as many people as possible and does the same for them.

Good Luck to You, Leo Grande premieres on Hulu this Friday, June 17.