Good Luck to You, Leo Grande: Are sex and love necessary partners?

Good Luck to You, Leo Grande Psychology, Psychoanalysis, Sex work, transactional relationships, sex and love

 

The Reluctant Wife is working out of town frequently these days, and she flew in very late Thursday night.  On Friday, we had nothing planned for the evening, and she suggested streaming “Good Luck to You, Leo Grande” which had been flitting across our feeds for a few days.  It meant we could stay in, which I know she values after being out of town as much as she has been (and I don’t mind given the current rate of COVID, especially among the students in my summer class).  My only preparation for the film were what the headlines on the clickbait were screaming – that Emma Thompson has a full nude scene as a 63-year-old woman…

 Emma Thompson is, of course, the ubiquitous actor whose screen presence is endearing in part because of her ability to simultaneously portray vulnerability and pluck.  Her role as the cuckolded wife in the family Christmas favorite Love Actually is but one example of this.  Pluck and vulnerability are on vivid display in this tightly scripted and acted film – though it feels more like a play.  Her character, Susan Robinson, who adopts the nom de boudoir Nancy Stokes, is a two-year widowed woman who hires a sex worker whose nom de boudoir is Leo Grande (Daryl McCormack). 

 The action takes place mostly in three scenes (or acts) in the comfortable but bland hotel room she has secured for their rendezvous, with one scene in the hotel’s coffee shop.

 Really?  A play about sex work?  And the man is the sex worker?  Hmm….  The uncomfortable part of this film, for me, is that the sex work looks very much like psychotherapy.  This film has much more in common with a series about therapy like In Treatment than with a movie about sex work like Boogie Nights.  It is a play about a very repressed woman who sets about claiming her sexuality, something that she has never done before.  And the vehicle for this is an intense, powerful interaction with a gorgeous, young, virile man and, though there are nude scenes, the intimacy is largely psychological and mostly occurs when both actors are clothed.

The Reluctant Wife and I had differing reactions to this film.  Her position was that this film did a nice job disentangling sex work from moral strictures.  It presented sex work as just that, a business arrangement and, as such, it is making the argument that sex work is honest work and should be treated as such.

I agree with this position in principle.  But I question whether sexual interactions can ever be simply transactional.  It is my assumption that sexual interactions involve something above and beyond the mutually shared pleasure – that something is a more deeply felt emotional attachment that occurs as a necessary side effect of sexual interactions.

My wife agrees that this can be the case, and is for us (which validates my experience of the sexual relationship within our marriage), but she does not see this as a necessary component of any sexual interaction.  She believes that consenting adults can have a mutually satisfying and simultaneously circumscribed sexual interaction that is what it is and nothing more.  Friends with benefits – or, more to the point, individuals with benefits that are bought and paid for.

 I think this film explores this question and provides supportive evidence for both of these positions, even though they are mutually contradictory.

The interaction is on Nancy's turf (she has secured the room) and she is the one paying for the service, thus the symbols of power lie with Nancy, not so subtly underscored by Leo’s being dark skinned.  Nancy is the owner, Leo would appear to be the sex slave (as it were) from the way that the relationship is “objectively” articulated.  But Leo’s apparent comfort with the situation, and Nancy’s apparent nervousness seems to more than balance the apparent power differential.

 Leo is smooth.  And gorgeous.  He is comfortable in his own skin – at least when Nancy is in the room.  We see little cracks in his confidence when she absents herself to freshen up in the lavatory and at other moments when she is distracted by, for instance, a call from her daughter.  When not in relationship, when not in contact, Leo is just a shade less comfortable.

Leo, though paid to be a partner, seduces Nancy by drawing her out.  He needs to know more about her so that he can be of service to her, but this also furthers the power imbalance in his direction – he knows more about her and he knows how it is that she needs him.  In part to balance this situation, and to create – I think – an emotionally as well as physically intimate space, Nancy turns the tables and draws Leo out.  This is OK, up to a point.  But Nancy crosses a line.  She works to discover who Leo “really” is, and he sees through this as an effort on Nancy’s part to put him into his place as a broken whore.  And he re-establishes the boundary, firmly.

 I would like to take a second pass at this. 

 Nancy comes into the relationship wanting to explore aspects of her sexuality that she has never experienced.  Sex in her marriage to her husband was perfunctory, quick and efficient, but it was not pleasurable.  Nancy would like to experience pleasure, but she is not sure that she can do this – I think in part because she is not at all certain that she is an attractive woman.

 Leo, in his seduction of Nancy, reassures her that he finds something attractive in each of his clients.  He notes that she is far from his oldest client.  His sexual interest in her, he assures her, will be genuine.  He does not specify that he is attracted to her, but that he will be.  He is certain of that.  He will discover something in her that is attractive. 

Failing to specify what he will find attractive is actually quite useful.  It allows Nancy to imagine what it is that he will find attractive; to think of herself in novel ways.  It also, I think, allows her to think more freely about what she finds attractive about Leo – she can begin to play with fantasy – to imagine, to dip into and out of what is and what might be.  In the thinking of Tom Ogden, Leo is helping Nancy Dream Undreamt Dreams.

Leo’s backstory, which Nancy draws and then forces out of him, does not quite square, in my mind, with the high-quality therapist that he turns out to be.  Maybe I just want to imagine that my job as a trainer of therapists is not in jeopardy.  I do think that much of therapy is “instinctual” and some people have a better knack for it than others.  And there are parts of the Leo character that are quite believable, including that he would learn to be so good at his trade in part because he is so attractive.

I think that attractive people have power.  The world reflects their attractiveness back at them and they feel confidence from knowing that they are attractive, and this confidence, in turn, makes them even more attractive.  This loop is, I think, a powerful one that helps attractive people manage the feelings of self-doubt that dog all of us. 

 Other things can help us manage our feelings of self-doubt as well, of course.  Whatever competences and skills we have are appreciated by those around us and this affords comfort as we manage the residue of various slights, failures of empathy and traumas that have led us to doubt that we are competent and able to fully inhabit ourselves.

Leo’s trauma is significant.  He was disowned by his mother for acting out his sexuality as a teenager and his mother now does not acknowledge that he exists.  I imagine that his sex work is a revolt against her and her disapproval, an affirmation of his value as a sexual creature, and a make shift defense against her critical voice.  Nancy’s crossing of Leo’s boundaries dismantles his makeshift defense and he collapses, momentarily, into a state of brokenness, from which he quickly claws his way back out.  And to make sure that he does not return to it, he imposes a rigid boundary in the relationship.

 So, many are things are at play in this relationship in addition to the apparently simple desire of Nancy to get in touch with herself as a sexual creature.  There are significant power dynamics and there are deeply felt esteem issues, and these are tangled together.  Leo and Nancy deftly untangle them, leading to the conclusion that sex work is both noble and ennobling.  Or it could be…

I wonder whether this movie is a fantasy – or, if you prefer – a think piece.  An examination of what could be and how sex work could be reparative rather than dirty and shameful, not to mention illegal.  Perhaps Leo has learned through the school of hard knocks various tricks of the trade.  He has learned that maintaining good boundaries is essential to doing this work.  He has learned that self-respect and respect of his clients and their integrity is essential to the work.  He has also learned how to manage a relationship with someone else while being authentic, present, and spontaneous in his interactions.

What I am describing in the last paragraph sounds suspiciously like what we teach our graduate students as they prepare for a career in serving the needs of people who have experienced and internalized slights, failures of empathy and traumas.  It helps for our students to explore through their own psychotherapy how they have dealt with their own histories and their own endowments and deficits – and psychoanalysts are required to undergo a personal analysis to engage in this exploration first hand.

I am not saying that the school of hard knocks could not have taught Leo Grande the skills he needs to do the work he does, but I think it would be terribly difficult (and inefficient) to learn these skills through trial and error, and I think it would be helpful to have a community of like-minded workers to support him through difficult periods/ relationships/ episodes.

I also think that this task is easier for Leo Grande than it would be for most sex workers because he is a man.  The social judgement of sexually active men is, of course, positive in a way that it isn’t, to this point in our history, for women.  Even without the Supreme Court’s decision to clarify that women’s bodies are something that men or the state or religion – anyone but women -own, sexual behavior on the part of women is condemned.  So, for the women who are doing this work, the opportunities for training and support (traditionally, at least in movies, provided through brothels and fellow sex workers) are even more essential to the well-being of the workers.

It is also the case, somewhat paradoxically, that we have ample evidence that having sex with a therapist does tremendous damage to our patients. Indeed, this is the third rail of psychological interactions.  Among other things, this movie is asking an inverse question, “Is psychotherapy possible in the context of a transactional sexual relationship?”

But I would like to go back to the opening question: is it possible for us to have transactional sexual relationships?  The somewhat paradoxical answer from this movie appears to be: yes, conditionally.  The paradoxical condition is – we can have transactional sex in the context of a carefully tended and mutually respectful relationship.

When leading man Hugh Grant was caught with a prostitute, he was asked (if memory serves) by Johnny Carson why he made use of prostitutes when so many women would gladly sleep with him.  His reply was interesting.  I think he said, “If I pay them, they will leave in the morning.”  He was clearly indicating that his sexual needs could be bifurcated from his relational needs.  This movie might add a small caveat; that his relational needs might also be met, at least in part, in a transactional sexual relationship – but his position would be that, just because he has sexual needs (and perhaps relational needs), he does not need to enter a long term/committed relationship to meet those needs.

 Nancy gets her needs met in the relationship with Leo in a deeply satisfying way.  She learns that her sexuality really is her own, and she is free to take that with her from this relationship.  We also learn that she has not only repressed herself, but she has oppressed others in her role as a teacher.  She revisits that, and also helps Leo re-own himself as a competent and useful worker.  Would that our therapeutic interactions could more frequently have similar outcomes!      

 

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