Good Luck to You, Leo Grande is up for another round of "Stream Peens"! Currently streaming on HULU in the US!
There's nothing like a little light-hearted solicitation to relive your lost youth and discover how amazing sex could be since your, now deceased, boring husband "missionary Martin" never gave it propa'. So, in walks gigolo Leo Grande (Daryl McCormack) to guide Nancy (Emma Thompson) in her search for the ever-elusive big "O".
Just chuck some fit bloke some cash and it'll solve all your problems basically. Some procrastination here, some procrastination there, and that's what Emma Thompson as Nancy does in the sex comedy drama ("sexadramady"?) penned by Katy Brand and directed by Sophie Hyde.
It's a weird one. At the heart of the film is a sex-positive message that has some genuinely touching moments from the inimitable Ms. Thompson. But when you come down to it, it misses the mark in giving Mr. McCormack enough meat to play with. You'll get what we mean when you give it a listen.
GOOD LUCK TO YOU, LEO GRANDE is currently streaming on HULU in the US.
Laura: I'll start it off okay. And I won't be as meandering as this film. I'm gonna get right down to the.
Ryan: Dirty business with the foreplay. Just get straight into the, uh, intercoursing.
Laura: Wonderful.
Ryan: Yes. You're on course for the intercourse.
Laura: Well, hello there. Welcome to On the BiTTE, the podcast that uncovers full frontal male nudity in cinema. My name is Laura, and I am joined by my male escort, Ryan.
Ryan: Isn't prostitution great?
Laura: As long as it's a.
Ryan: Is.
Laura: Like, is this like servitude or slavery?
Ryan: This is the modern day Pretty Woman. Except it's Pretty Boy.
Laura: Or you mean American Gigolo would probably be even closer.
Ryan: This is kind of like a mix between American Gigolo and 28 hotel rooms. Based on what we've covered? Yes, based on nothing but just a brief understanding of the content and just what it looks like on face value.
Laura: Why don't I introduce the film?
Ryan: Yeah, let's just get to it. We're very enthusiastic. Also, this is Quick Fire because we're in the midst of, uh, uh, the hurricane that's, uh, heading forward at the moment. Um, it's Idalia.
Laura: You're going to get some ambiance with this episode.
Ryan: I know it's not even Halloween yet.
Laura: Like, Sexy storm ambiance with our I.
Ryan: Never realized Idalia was like a name, because obviously, they're making their way through the eyes now. Um, Idalia just reminds me of, like.
Laura: A Final Fantasy boss or a character, maybe.
Ryan: Potentially potentially in that world. The demon, uh, of virtue.
Laura: The double f universe.
Ryan: You're like yeah. You understand as well. I know that's right.
Laura: Yeah, we poked. Well, not yet. We picked a really good time to start recording this episode.
Laura: So here we are. I'm excited. We are talking about the 2022 sex comedy drama good luck to you, Leo Grande starring Emma Thompson. Darryl McCormack as well. It's kind of a two hander, as they say.
Ryan: Yeah, it's not the first time I've heard that. Um, so, yes, um, it's like a one room drama for the most part. All takes place, uh, in this hotel room.
Laura: I found it really annoying at the point in the film where she said, oh, I booked the same hotel room because I didn't want a change of layout.
Ryan: And I thought, it's because she's been written to be this old lady. Yeah, because old ladies don't like change.
Laura: She's not an old lady. She's a wonderful, sexy, mature woman.
Ryan: Okay, right.
Laura: Well, yeah, but this film was directed by Sophie Hyde, and I'm going to drop the synopsis really quick, and then I'll let you talk about Sophie. So the synopsis from Letterboxd is nancy Stokes doesn't know good sex, whatever it may be. Nancy, a retired schoolteacher, is pretty sure she's never had it, but she is determined to finally do something about that. She even has a plan. It involves an anonymous hotel room and a young sex worker who calls himself Leo Grande
Ryan: OOH.
Laura: And the tagline is, it's never too late. To try something new. That something new is a new penis.
Ryan: Yeah.
Ryan: Um, I guess we'll get into Sophie Hyde. Um, and obviously the writer, because the writer was familiar to me as well. So. Sophie hyde. Sophie Hyde. Uh, she's an Australian film director, writer, and producer. And she's based in Adelaide. Uh, she's also the co founder of Closer Productions. Um, she's worked in TV. She's also worked as a producer. I'm not going to list everything that she's worked on. Um, but she has been best known and her filmography is relatively quite brief, but we'll go through it. Anyway. Good, uh, luck to you. Leo Grande is her most latest film. Uh um, so let's start off in 2005 with a short called okay, let's talk about Me. Then in 2006, another short, which was The Road to Wallaroo. In 2007, another short. It's my last ten with you. And in 2009, there's a short called Necessary Games. Um, a lot of these are also documentary shorts as well. Um, she doesn't really get into kind of the dramatization stuff until, I think, elephantiasis. Now, I'm not too sure if it's meant to be elephantitis, but it's not spelt the same way. So I'm assuming it's elephantiasis, which is the way that it is spelt. And that was in 2010. And that's also a short. So she technically doesn't get known for her feature film stuff until Life and Movement in 2011, which is, as far as I'm aware, and from what I was reading, is an interesting documentary film about dance and movement. Um, but in 2014, she releases 52 Tuesdays, followed up in 2019 but Animals. And then in 2022, we have this groundbreaking masterpiece. Good luck to you, Leo Grande
Laura: Yeah.
Ryan: Um, written by Katie Brand. Um, are you aware of who Katie Brand is?
Laura: I looked her up and there are some things that she is associated with that I am familiar with. But please do tell me your favorites.
Ryan: She's basically she's already a writer. She's written this thing, but she's a comedian and an actress. So if you're from the UK, you're probably familiar with her TV show. They used to show on ITV two called Katie Brand's big ass show. Wasn't she a brand of humor? Um, I never found her that particularly funny. Um, she's kind of like the UK's answer to M Melissa McCarthy, let's put it that way.
Laura: I'm so glad you brought her up.
Ryan: Yeah. But obviously she's branched out from her more sketch comedy stuff to write a film about a young boy prostitute and the women he seduces. Yeah, it's like only 97 minutes, so it's incredibly respectful of your time. Yes. Never, um, overstays its welcome as much as it might feel.
Ryan: So, um, but also, this is another one of our installments in the Stream Peen series that we've decided to adopt this year. Coming in your face. Stream peas. Uh, no.
Laura: Yeah, so this one is this particular film is streaming on Hulu exclusively.
Ryan: This never came out in the cinema at all, did it? It just went straight to we're starting to see a certain kind of pattern with some of these movies. And I guess we'll kind of get into that as we go along.
Laura: Yeah. I'll make a chart, a flowchart.
Ryan: Yeah. Um, if they don't go to the cinema, guys, there's definitely an aspect of a reference to their quality as to reason why they're not getting pumped into marketing, um, and shown in the cinema.
Laura: I'm not going to agree with that just yet, because there's a lot of things I've seen in the cinema lately that have been trash. So it doesn't necessarily give me a stamp of quality.
Ryan: Most movies over the last, like, five to six months, other than the notable exceptions, have all lost money or have not met the expectations that they were. So going to the cinema is not an expectation that a film is going to be successful. But I do feel like there's an overarching sense of the quality of the film that you're getting. If you do go to the cinema.
Laura: Maybe there was a time where this could have been a theatrical release. It just is very much seems like a play.
Ryan: The market is very different now. Yeah.
Laura: And it's incredibly intimate. And then again, there was a movie that came out really recently that has a similar layout.
Ryan: Stephen Daldry movie, uh, what was it called? Quarantine. No, the one with, um oh, boogers.
Laura: I forgot what it's called.
Ryan: Yeah. Ah. Um I'll look it up, but I.
Laura: Saw it recently in the cinema and it was kind of this psychosexual thriller. No nudity, but same thing where you're in a loft or a hotel room and you're just in there and it gets incredibly claustrophobic. And I understand how these things are getting produced now, because we're in a hopefully, fingers crossed, post COVID world. But yeah, you would film things in these small rooms with small crew and small cast, and you could get things made. Because, baby, I need my movies. I need my movies.
Ryan: I think we were thinking of two separate films. I was thinking about the Stephen Daldry drama that was made, and it was all set in a house, and it came out during Quarantine, and it was called Together, and there was James McEvoy and Sharon Horgan. Um, so there is that movie. That's what I thought. I think you can compare the two. You can certainly say good luck to you. Leo Grande could have been shot during COVID because it's all pretty much all in one location. And it's what it is. Right. And the same with obviously Together, which is predominantly just, uh it's like the filming of, uh ah, a two person play, like a set piece. Um, and this is very much kind of what this is.
Laura: Yeah. The one I was thinking of is the Zachary, uh, Wigan Wygon.
Ryan: Okay. Sanctuary. Yeah. You saw that in the cinema.
Laura: Sanctuary. Yes. That is where I'm saying that this doesn't feel like it could be a theater movie, but then we just had one that came out very similar, not in style and not necessarily in content, but where you have kind of a claustrophobic hotel room. I think they tried to not make it feel claustrophobic. I don't feel like I'm trapped in this room during Leo Grande necessarily, because it is very bright. But it does lend to being so intimate.
Ryan: Yeah. There is a very great level of intimacy, um, in the film, and I think that everyone does well with it. It lacks a lot of, I guess, individuality in a sense of being cinematic.
Laura: Yeah. The style is kind of not there.
Ryan: It's incredibly sedate. I'm trying to use nice words for the film because obviously it is made in a very constricted manner. And I don't know why that is, either because it has been written as such or because of, uh, what it had at its disposal. But it's very films of this type, which I think are made they're made better in Europe, um, than maybe in this case. But yeah, there's just not a real sense of, I guess, like, drama or you would think, like, if you're shooting in one space, you would try and utilize the space to the best of your ability. So you would do things with the lighting or you would do things with the camera if you felt like that was going to be a restricted thing and the location was never going to change. But that doesn't really happen. It's kind of innocuous and it's a little bit sleepy, and it really kind of rides on the shoulders of this script. And I don't know if the script is strong enough to sustain what it's trying to do and what it's trying to say. So it's an OD one.
Laura: So I've got some facts about this. Some little trivia bits, some tidbits. Tidbits. The film was filmed in order over 19 days, and I think it took a while to find Darryl as the costar of this film against Emma Thompson.
Ryan: Because did they lose him or what?
Laura: No, I just think it took they.
Ryan: Took a while trying to find the Leo Grind character.
Laura: Yeah.
Ryan: Right.
Laura: Because they believed that if they had picked someone that was 30 or over 30, it would maybe seem a little bit aggressive. So they needed someone younger than 30.
Ryan: Right.
Laura: And when they ended up auditioning him and they decided to take him on, um, Emma and Darryl kind of took a long walk together. They were supposed to have a zoom meeting, but she goes, no, I want to meet you in the morning. We're going to take a walk. And just walked and got to know each other because they are being so intimate, and it is just between the two of them. So they have to have a chemistry. Um, so those are my tidbits. I have more, but I'm going to save them for later. I can't just drop all my goodies right front.
Ryan: So listeners, if you weren't listening there, um, they didn't do a zoom call. They had a walk. They took a walk so that they could work on the intimate of their roles.
Laura: The movie is set up in four bits, essentially. So you have four different meetings of these two characters, where, as you have heard, Emma Thompson's character, Nancy is a woman who is a widow who has never had an orgasm. And she's tired of lying about it. Apparently her husband was trash at sex and she never said anything about it. And she lived with him until he died. And she goes, I really want to learn about myself and I want to know what this is all about. And I feel like I lived my life without knowing myself, knowing my body, knowing, uh, the pleasures of the flesh, the pleasures of her own body.
Ryan: Fucking pinhead in this room now.
Laura: Uh, and she finds this little box and it's like a music like hellraiser. And I'm just joking. The gates of hell open up. And Leo Grande comes out. No. Um, but this is essentially a journey of self discovery for her character. I do feel like the Leo Grande character is just there in order to kind of guide her through this journey. Um, I don't think he's responsible necessarily for that self discovery, uh, that she's going. So it's a lot of just back and forth. She's nervous when she meets this guy, mhm. She's never done this before. She used to talk about sex work at her job because she used to be a teacher.
Ryan: Religious education teacher.
Laura: Yeah.
Ryan: She's like the most useless subject that you ever had when you were at high school, at least in the UK. Religious education was a was that a class you took? Yeah. Re was a thing. Yeah. It was like only second of uselessness, uh, to physical education. Anyone who decided they were going to take standard grade physical education and I'm not going to shit all over you guys. Like you wanted to go do your fucking sports sciences when you left high school. But it was a waste of fucking time.
Laura: I liked working out during high school.
Ryan: How many of you are running a gym now?
Laura: Oh, I didn't want to run a gym.
Ryan: I just thought it would be nice.
Laura: To get some exercise.
Ryan: Um, yeah, I didn't see the point in religious education. And it does actually make me sound a little bit ignorant. Um, but for whatever we were taught, it was a complete and utter waste of time. It was horrific. So for her to say that she's a religious education, like she's a religious education, uh, teacher in that particular subject, yeah. Um, it's hard because she is so disparaging towards her kids. Who are still obviously living, and her husband, who obviously just had a way of doing things and just liked a little bit of missionary and then he would pop off to sleep.
Laura: I really, really liked those moments where she did talk about her children. Because I feel as though parents, when you talk to them, not all the time, but especially in popular media, they're always going on about their kids. And it's positive, right? Joy of motherhood and the joy of your children and, um, watching them grow up and being so proud of them. But to have someone in a film, just say, my son is incredibly boring, and he's going to get his master's degree, and it's so boring, I don't even care. And her daughter's annoying. And if she had known how it was going to be before she had kids, she never would have bothered. What she's saying? She basically says that it took over her entire life to where she doesn't even know who the hell she is. And that is great. And it's horribly sad and tragic. But I just like that that was part of the dialogue. And she's just completely honest with this.
Ryan: She said, stranger kids are a dead weight around my neck, is the words that she used. But I love that yes and no. It's also kind of like we're watching a film that's kind of set in the modern age. And I know what you're talking about is that we're kind of straying away from the idea of the nuclear family, the traversal of being an adult and meeting someone, having kids without someone having a house and doing that sort of thing. A lot of people, let's just say millennials, elder millennials, they're not doing that. They don't want to have kids. They have a great respect for their time, and they have a greater sense of the world and how it's controlled and things. So there's no kind of positivity towards the future, at least I feel here. Um.
Laura: Really hard time.
Ryan: Well, I do respect the fact that she can be quite honest and things. Um, but I did write this thing down. And I was kind of like, well, they're all her decisions at the end of the day now, we're never given any motivation as to if she was coerced or she felt like she had to go through with these certain things. Like, if she had to have these kids, did she have to marry this man? Did she have to have this career?
Laura: Of course. But I mean, at the age that she is, is the age of our parents at this point. So you've got that boomer generation that it is just ingrained in them when they're young. That is what you do. These are the steps you take in order to become an adult. And sometimes you feel trapped in that. And until you figure out yourself, if you're given the chance to figure out yourself, and who you want to be and what you want to achieve. If you don't get that chance, then you just kind of slide into what's expected. And I think that's what she did. And she just wonders when you're getting older and you think, what if? I think, overall, I had had an explosive orgasm a lot earlier.
Ryan: Yeah.
Laura: What would I have done with my life?
Ryan: I think there's also a thing where she's like she's looking at the twilight of her life. Like, this is the second half of her life. If it is a half, to be fair. She is retired. She's effectively in the later years of her life. So she is starting to panic that she's not lived the life to the fullest. And that I can fully understand.
Laura: Yeah.
Ryan: Again, I kind of feel like it's all her choice. And I can't feel too much of, uh, a level of sympathy towards the choices she's made. Because, like many people, she's quite okay with just doing whatever she is that she's doing, and she'll just complain about it afterwards. It's a very British ideology.
Laura: I'm not sympathizing with her. I just like hearing someone admit that maybe having kids wasn't the greatest choice. Because for some people is, and it's great. And it is the realization of all your hopes and dreams. And then other people are like, oh, no, I made a huge mistake. And then what do you do?
Ryan: Yes.
Laura: You'Re done, so you're stuck.
Ryan: But, uh, dear listeners, um, how does that sound to you? Does that sound interesting? Does that sound like it substantiates a 97 minutes runtime?
Laura: Oh, no, this was just a comment in the film that I liked. Yeah, she did talk about it more, but I mean, this is more about her own, um, discover sexual journey, I guess.
Ryan: Yeah. Here's, um, the thing. If Emma Thompson wasn't in this role, this film wouldn't be worth anything. It really wouldn't. I think Daryl McCormack does a very good job. He's only good because Emma Thompson's there.
Laura: Yeah. They're great at playing off of each other. And I think they have a great they got something going on.
Ryan: They do. Yeah. They do actually get that chemistry to work.
Ryan: Um, there are points in the film, though, and I guess I don't know if this is the way, because you mentioned it a couple of times as well. And you don't usually bring things like this up where there's, like, weird music cues. At one point, I thought there was, like, a random squeal that I could hear, which was unnatural to the hotel room setting.
Laura: There was a part where the music started up, and I looked around because I thought someone was playing music outside.
Ryan: Yes.
Laura: And it didn't sound like it was coming from the film at all.
Ryan: No, it was weird.
Laura: I'm like, did you hear that? Oh, wait, it's the movie. It's the movie that has never happened before.
Ryan: Yeah, it was kind of I kind of had these weird sort of low budget, first timer sort of things in it where I was, huh? Huh. Because there's another point where Leo plays music.
Laura: Oh, God.
Ryan: And the music starts before he's obviously pressed play on his phone. And the music fades, uh, out before he's been able to stop it.
Laura: Yeah. And he's doing those Grande big gestures with his phone. He's got the phone. His hand is moving large and wild. Tapping that phone, tapping play, tapping it on. And the fact that you could tell that the music started well before I'm like, oh, dear.
Ryan: It's like he's either switching his phone on or he's doing something. But either way, pick something. Make a decision of whether or not this tap is going to signify what would effectively be him starting to play the music because that's what looked like it was happening. It's weird, very strange, like, kind of technical things that you're just looking at and you're wondering what's going on. And for the most part, the music cues and stuff aren't a problem. It's just those particular moments. You do kind of wonder, what is that meant to be? What is it meant to do? Because then it kind of then infects that, um, moment that's meant to be quite kind of gentle and warming. When they start dancing for they try and loosen her up a wee bit.
Laura: Um, they have a lot of things to get through. They've got to do oral on him, oral on her. They got a 69 and they got a doggy style, so they got a lot to get through that day.
Ryan: Um, I think there's several little kind of stories going on. So with him, his journey is, I need to get this woman off and make her happy because that's his job with her, it's about she's trying to find her kind of sexual awakening. And she's doing that. But then separately, because of the conversations that they have, they're both separately dealing with bringing up kind of personal issues in their lives and in their past that start to collide with, obviously, the main mission of the movie, which is you got to get Emma you got to give Emma the big O. She's got to get the big O so that she's happy know, he can provide it. She just needs to get there. But they're kind of too preoccupied with where's Leo Grande's? Like, what's Leo Grande's history and what's her history? Is this your real name? Is that your real name?
Laura: Well, she's procrastinating the whole thing. Every single time they get together, she keeps talking and being incredibly annoying. That isn't a really annoying character. Yes, Nancy, it's not, uh, very frustrating. And I think she oversteps her boundaries constantly, uh, and asking him questions that are none of her business, frankly, because his job, as was hired on, was to do the sexy things with her for a certain amount of time. So she gets however much time, hours she booked, and then she can do whatever she wants. I'm sure there were rules that she signed, but she just keeps bothering him about his family and his job and making fun of him and saying stupid things like, why don't you ever tell your mom what you do? If you're so proud that you're a sex worker and you give pressure to people, why don't you tell your mom? And I'm thinking, are you nuts?
Ryan: She really batters this home over several different meetings and it gets a little bit tired.
Laura: Like, leave him alone. He has a job and he's getting paid and he has nice clothes and he's very nice to you. And just leave him alone.
Ryan: And I'm assuming he wasn't cheap. I'm assuming he wasn't cheap at all.
Laura: I think it was the second meeting where she said, this is going to have to be our last meeting. This is why I made a list of all the sexy things I want to do because I can't afford you again.
Ryan: Yeah. Was it in the second meeting that she brought herself up and compared herself to Ralph Harris because she didn't like the idea that she was going to have sex with someone considerably younger than her?
Laura: I think so, yeah.
Ryan: Which is certainly a way that I have found in the bedroom. It, uh, definitely heightens the mood if you compare yourself to a serial child molester.
Laura: She has had one instance of foreplay her whole life that left her unsatisfied. And then she's like a pump and go from her husband the rest of her life.
Ryan: Her husband's like a three pump jump. Uh, he's just not very good at it. But then I'm also kind of like having sex and improving and being better at sex. It's a two way street as well. You know what I mean? It's kind of like she can direct you and tell you to do certain things. He can direct her to tell her to do something things.
Laura: Well, they obviously didn't have a great rapport or a dialogue between the two.
Ryan: Of that because if they did, they.
Laura: Would be able to I don't know if you're with someone long enough, tell them your Christmas kinks get weird.
Ryan: Uh, yeah. I mean, it works for us. Uh, Christmas, Leo Grande Yeah. Um, it's weird when those things start kind of being brought up.
Ryan: But the thing is, there are some genuinely quite touching moments in the film, I think.
Laura: And I think very touching moments.
Ryan: Um, yes, there is some good bits in the film. Um, and it's purely because of Emma Thompson and because it's Emma Thompson, um, and she's able to just take these elements and elevate them a little bit more, which I feel like in the hands of somebody else might not be. It's one of the Shining moments. You feel like it's relatively quite stale and she kind of elevates it a little bit. Um, she's wonderful, but the whole film really surround is permeated by a lot of sex positivity. And I think that's one of the most appealing things about the film in general is because you have this young man who's with obviously this considerably older woman who just doesn't like the way that she looks. And obviously it's due to aging. It happens to us all. And it's just about building her back up from the ground up. And then obviously, she's able to fuck everything up with her big mouth and saying all sorts of things. Um, but overall, the whole thing is permeated by a really nice sense of sex positivity. And there's really nice descriptions of, uh, attractiveness and lust and how do you navigate these certain kind of feelings if you've never felt them before. Like, all of these sorts of things. Um, and then when obviously they get down to the nitty gritty, it's like she wants to do a blow job, he wants to get the pussy to know. Uh, they want to do a 69, like, I guess well, she made a.
Laura: Nice concise list of all the things she wanted to try.
Ryan: She did make a very concise list.
Laura: I thought that was fair because she said she'd never done oral and her husband never did it on her. And yeah, she's like bucket list of.
Ryan: Sexual pleasures, I guess.
Ryan: There's this kind of relatively quite sizable generational gap between, obviously, Leo and, uh, Emma Thompson's character. I can never remember her name. I don't think it really matters.
Laura: Nancy.
Ryan: Nancy. Um, there's an evident kind of generational gap between them because obviously, the things that she's listing down to kind of most people say, like our age or even the generation below us, or even certainly generations above us, like the idea of oral or 16 ironing or any of these sorts of things. They're not the most adventurous things in the world. They're relatively quite they're part of the repertoire. Let's put it that way. So for this, I was kind of like I kind of respected that because it did end up kind of it illustrated the generational gap sexually between obviously from what she's grown up to know and obviously what he's grown up to know. And obviously, he's very sexually adventurous because, uh, he's a jiggle.
Laura: Yeah. So he knows well, he knows all the things. What I found weird was how often she complimented him on how, uh what's the word I'm thinking of? But like, professional and kind and caring and knowledgeable and really holding her hand through this whole process. But there are several times throughout the film where he and not counting the time where she's acting not okay and saying she's because there was a moment where she mentions to him that she looked him up online and found out what his real name was and found out all this stuff about him kind.
Ryan: Of fucked up and. Stupid.
Laura: Yeah. I mean, you have to have a breakup to get a resolution right in.
Ryan: The middle just before potentially giving a blow job.
Laura: Yeah.
Ryan: It's like, oh, I've been looking you up online. I know exactly who you are and stuff. I'm going to speak to your mom.
Laura: Yeah, I'll talk to your mom. I'll tell her how good at sex you are. Stop. I hated it. It made me so mad. But there are moments when they first meet that makes me think he is a fresh sex worker. Maybe he just started and I don't know, because she goes to get into her sexy clothes on their very first meeting. And he's just sitting there and he's trying to look cool. Right. And he's kind of, like, unbuttoned his shirt, laying on the bed. He's still wearing socks, which, God help me, no. And then he just decides to go into the mini bar.
Ryan: Would you still fuck me on the bed if I had my socks on?
Laura: Probably.
Ryan: My big stripy socks.
Laura: Those are nice socks. But no, I mean, this is like if I'm paying, uh, a prime dollar for this experience and this dude's wearing socks. No.
Ryan: All right. Okay.
Laura: I see, like, I'm paying for a fantasy here. And socks are not involved in this fantasy. He goes to the mini fridge and grabs, uh, what looks like a little whiskey out of it, chugs it, and then grabs a Mars bar from the fridge and starts chowing down while she's getting dressed to get sexy. I could not deal. Then, of course, when she comes out, she's like, can you go brush your teeth? Because I don't like the smell of Mars bars. Because now he smells like whiskey and Mars bars. And she's paying how much money per hour to get taken to sextown.
Ryan: I mean, if she was going out with a Scotsman, that's exactly what they taste and smell like mars bars and whiskey.
Laura: Uh, come on.
Ryan: Yeah. No, I understand. And that's what I kind of felt. But, uh, these are things that are, um I think he's been gifted with, obviously, the gift of the gab. Right. He's really good at chatting to women and talking to them and stuff like that. And he's taken it this step further.
Laura: He's the Irish. Julian kay.
Ryan: Yes, he is.
Laura: Um, but Julian Kay was better at.
Ryan: His know, he's using words like Empirical or Empirically. He refers to as Empirically sexy.
Laura: Uh, he's a wicked smack.
Ryan: Yeah. Some of the dialogue is a little bit OD. They do their best, but at the same time, um, I can understand how you might think that he's because the thing is, the film's not interesting if he's incredibly, uh, seasoned at this. You know what I mean? It's like business as usual. Like, someone just walks in there. Like Cary Grant would walk in there and know he'd get the job done and know it'd be the best thing ever.
Ryan: What's that other movie that's got a male prostitute in it? What is it? What is that film? It's not American jiggle, though. Not getting that mixed.
Laura: He's he's midnight Cowboy.
Ryan: He's definitely no. Well, midnight Cowboy. He's not I don't know if he does much in the way of too much fucking in Midnight Cowboy anyway.
Laura: He's just kind of urban cowboy.
Ryan: Yeah. He's just slack Johnny's way through New York. Um, I hate to think that it kind of feels that way, is that you kind of have to have these characters that know because that's what you're taught as a writer when you do these writing courses. These people have to be flawed in one way or another. They cannot be perfect. There has to be something for them to build. Like there has to be these peaks and troughs within scenes so that you can create tension and drama and all this sort of thing.
Laura: I think that this film would have been completely fine if you'd taken away the whiskey in the Mars bars because that just seemed out of character, in my opinion, for this guy who's a sexy sex worker. And he is doing a really good job up until this point, and this is the first time he's seeing this woman. He did get repeat business from this, but that's not typically how you would do that. But I think you could have had a flaw just by him talking about his family and talking about his past.
Ryan: Might have been enough.
Laura: Yes, the Mars bar thing was gross.
Ryan: But, uh, I think that's what that was supposed to be, though.
Laura: Fair. Absolutely fair.
Ryan: That's what that's supposed to be.
Laura: You could have chopped out a good 60 seconds if you just didn't do that.
Ryan: You could have yes.
Ryan: The film itself do you think the film could have been 88 minutes?
Laura: That could have hell, yeah.
Ryan: It's even sexier.
Laura: Yeah.
Ryan: 88.
Laura: Stream right through that bad boy.
Ryan: Um, yeah. So, I mean, I feel like it ends up kind of turning into script Writing 101 when they do things like that. And when you come out of a moment like that and you're slightly confused and you kind of don't really fully understand why they've done that. Because again, the resolution of that moment is that he brushes his teeth and then he just has to work a tiny bit harder to just get to the destination point, which is he's going to make love.
Laura: He should have had lunch before he got there. That's all.
Ryan: Yeah, he probably should have done. Or at least not bitten into, uh, her hotel bill by getting other because you know that Mars bar was probably about like five pounds.
Laura: Absolutely.
Ryan: At least. And obviously that whiskey was at least twelve pounds.
Laura: Absolutely.
Ryan: Um, but no, um, I mean, by the here's the thing. By the time they get to their third meeting or something like that, she's calling him the master of the menopause, which I didn't like.
Laura: No, didn't like that either.
Ryan: Really didn't like it at all.
Laura: Not at all.
Ryan: Yeah. I've written this down in my notes. I'm like the film is a little bit sad in its frustration that it causes. I think that's kind of the thing that I have against it. There is some genuinely touching moments, and I'm not going to lie, some of them are really touching moments because you can tell that this woman feels like she's not lived her best life, and she really wishes she did.
Laura: Yeah.
Ryan: But there's other times where you're like, you're so fucking annoying. You deserve this. Because these are the choices that you've made. You made these choices.
Laura: I love that this woman is taking her life and her she's taking initiative now, right.
Ryan: That's at least, uh, it took her.
Laura: A long time, and she's realizing that maybe this is how she's going to get it done. Because she said, I can't get a man like you in the streets, so I had to pay for it. Okay. She didn't want a man in the streets.
Ryan: I will get you between the sheets.
Laura: She goes, I didn't want an old man. I want a young, tight man. I want a man that's all taking care of himself.
Ryan: Yeah, he's taking care of himself. He's fucking young. He's like, in his twenty s. Of course he can maintain a physique like that. Uh, in his 20s. We're in our thirty s and we struggle with trying to maintain any incredibly difficult oh, we're like jelly. I feel like a jelly boy.
Laura: Don't call me jelly. If I went to the gym in my 20s, as much as I go to the gym now, I'd be some sort of bodybuilder. Like, I'd look like Linda Hamilton.
Ryan: Sarah Connor. Uh, you would be like Sarah Connor.
Laura: I would be Sarah.
Ryan: You'd be cleaning out an M 16 in the desert and writing so hot. Yeah. You'd be writing that message that they do in T two.
Laura: And here I am just trying to stave off the inevitable. Like, that's all I'm doing. Hour after hour, day after day. This guy in your 20s, you could do whatever. You could just eat one less piece of bread and then be cut. That's what he does.
Ryan: Probably, potentially. But also he'll have the what's the word? The virality of a 20 year old. He'll find it a lot easier to get his jollies off to, say, people he might not normally be attracted to, um, that he can quite easily kind of switch his brain off and get the job done.
Laura: Um, are you saying that because she's female or because of her age?
Ryan: Well, he has to do a variety of different things. And he will come into situations where he's going to stumble across someone that he's not sexually attracted to. But I think as a 20 something year old who's quite viral, I think he's able to kind of work with it a little bit. That's from me knowing people in my twenty s, I was a little bit pickier. But some other folk I remember, I'd be like, whoa, that's rough.
Laura: Well, I think that's probably why he's well suited to the job and the task at hand.
Ryan: Yes.
Laura: Because he's down with anyone, anytime, with anything. Yeah.
Ryan: There is a point later on and it does make me question the depth to which he's kind of taken this role that, uh, when he goes to get the sex toy and it's just like this little vibrating tongue ring, I was like, really? That's it?
Laura: Yeah. You're like, okay, I thought about that. I did think about that. Because when he goes to get that tiny little vibrator that looks like it came out of a gas station bathroom quarter machine, I thought, that's not going to do a damn thing.
Ryan: Well, you know, those things come out of, uh like you can get them out of any machines in Jen's toilets and pubs and stuff.
Laura: What I said, yeah, those little exactly.
Ryan: Those little vibrating ring things.
Laura: Yeah. So you grab one of those bad boys that he picked up on the way over and that's not going to do anything for this woman. But then I thought, she hasn't been fiddled with enough downtown. So it probably would work. Probably would work.
Ryan: Uh, yeah. He's like pulling out a massive dildo. Just going to got this pull out a hitachi. A hitachi.
Laura: But that would probably send her into a full stroke.
Ryan: Potentially. There is that issue.
Laura: She would stiffen up and she wouldn't be able to breathe. And she'd have a full on panic attack. That's why you got to take it slow with that tiny little vending machine.
Ryan: Dear, oh dear. Anyway, life that's not to say that when things start to happen, they aren't a little bit sexy. Emma Thompson's. Very good looking.
Laura: Yeah.
Ryan: Um, but here we are. We're at the dick scene now.
Laura: 1 hour, 32 minutes and 45 seconds. So this is during the fourth meeting. Okay. The fourth and finale.
Ryan: The finale.
Laura: The finale meeting between these two people. And this is, uh, I uh, believe after the point where they've done all the things. So they've been all around that hotel room, dirtying up all the pillows. They've been doing a doggy style over here. They've been doing a 69 over here. They've been doing upside down weird stuff. They're all over the place. Okay.
Ryan: They're in such a rush. The filmmakers are in such a rush to get this done. Then we get to this moment. They've obviously it's so brief. Like so unbelievably brief.
Laura: The buildup has been quite long, but I do understand why they're doing it. Because the character has been so completely uptight the whole time. She hasn't been able to just release the dragon. He keeps asking her, did it happen? Didn't happen. Because she had been wanting to have an orgasm. But she thought it was too much pressure. Right. So that's why she made a list of these are the tasks I can accomplish. I can accomplish a 69, I can accomplish doggy style, oral, et cetera. But when it comes to an orgasm, she thought that's just unattainable. It is a goal, but she's not going to write it down because she's never had it. It's been just out of reach forever.
Ryan: I mean, she's not going to get there with that attitude. Really?
Laura: That's fair.
Ryan: You know what I mean? Going negative, inspect a negative outcome. That's what I would say.
Laura: But she's on her own short bus journey. Except that she just hires one guy to get it done.
Ryan: Yeah. I mean, that's a comparison to make.
Laura: But, uh, yeah, she's also looking for her orgasm. See, it's a perfect connection. See, I got this.
Ryan: True. But then content wise, for something that they're both films that deal with an idea of sex positivity, I still do realize which film is probably better at that's.
Laura: Not difficult at all. But here we are. So they've been going at it. She's like, don't worry about the orgasm. I'm just having a really nice time. I'm having a great time.
Laura: So Leo goes to get a drink of water and exit in one.
Ryan: He's completely starkers.
Laura: Yes. Everyone is naked. I mean, at this point, you've seen everyone is naked.
Ryan: Everyone is in the room.
Laura: Everyone is in the room. They've been having sex. They're both naked. They've been naked for a while.
Ryan: Yeah.
Laura: Um, so this is when he turns around. So this is when he's about to go grab his tiny little vibrator. But as he turns around, well, he.
Ryan: Does have all yours thing. Like he takes a condom off. Yes, he takes a condom off. And then he throws it in the bin. And then he obviously has the drink of water.
Laura: Yes.
Ryan: And his bags to his left hand side. And this is all kind of like in a mid, I guess it's like a mid close up sort of thing. It felt like it was slightly wider.
Laura: But it did feel wider. But because of where the camera was, it was higher up on his body than it should have been.
Ryan: Um, you're going to find a lot of comparisons to that moment in the Voyeurs where it's kind of like they do a very good job of just like hiding most of it really well.
Laura: They've hid. This is the first time these two characters have been naked together where we've been involved.
Ryan: Yes.
Laura: Because every other time that they've had sex or they've done anything together, it cuts away. It cuts away. So you're at your next meeting. This is the first time. Uh, yeah. Everyone's naked. You're seeing everything happen. So now it's like we're welcomed into their sex pod and watching everything unfold at this point. But you're right. So it's kind of in that midwide type of shot and he turns around to go to his bag.
Ryan: It's basically framed in such a way that if it needed to tilt up rapidly just in case it has the room to do that.
Laura: It did seem that during this whole part that they were shying away from it.
Ryan: They 100% were trying their best.
Laura: I mean, if they were trying their best, they absolutely could have cut out that dick. That penis didn't not that I'm m saying it didn't need to be there. It needed to be there.
Ryan: They gave you a little bit of a taste, but you didn't get access to the buffet.
Laura: Yes. So you do get a flash when he turns around there for a second after getting that drink of water. And again she's on the bed and she just decides maybe she's going to take care of herself. Maybe she's going to go downtown herself, do a little traveling, and then see what happens. So while she is discovering herself yes, this is when Leo turns around and he's got this little vibrator. And these two things kind of happen at once, if I'm not mistaken. So she is orgasming on her own, on um, the bed by herself. They've done all the things. They've done all the pleasures together. And she just is still in the zone and decides to take care of it while he has a little vibrator. Because he's like, I'm going to make this happen. I've got this tiny little guy. I'm going to make this happen. But that's when you see not his whole body, but uh, the camera is slightly lower this time. So you do get a shot there of when he turns around with this tiny thing on his finger.
Ryan: It's so brief. It is so incredibly brief.
Laura: It is better than a lot of things. Not a lot of things that we've done. But I mean, Voyeur is especially way better. Um, it's not a blink and you miss it moment. It's there and you see it.
Ryan: Um, yeah.
Laura: Which we'll break down when we do our ratings and stuff as well. But I think in terms of how we typically see and rate these things in terms of balance and honesty, balance is off.
Ryan: The balance is way off.
Laura: I'm not but the balance is well, yeah, maybe like a 75%. There are points 5% him.
Ryan: Yeah. There are points where you do see probably more of Emma Thompson than you either need. Um, weird. It's a weird set of circumstances when if you felt like everything was relatively quite balanced and it felt kind of free and open, then it would be okay. But then you're kind of just like, oh no, it's mostly just Emma Thompson.
Laura: Getting but it's all in this one scene. So it doesn't feel like it's spread over the whole film where she's naked all the time and he's always taking her clothes. Do it's just in that one end final meeting.
Ryan: I mean, there's the point, uh, earlier on in the movie where he's gone down on her and she goes to put her pants on. And that's all seen in a wide you definitely see stuff there. It's unavoidable.
Laura: I didn't catch it as much as you did. But I do remember that moment where I was like, oh, damn.
Ryan: Yeah. So there are points where you're kind of just like, okay, well, here's the thing. And I think this is very important.
Ryan: And I think this is something that I think I liked American Jiggle for, is that I wanted to get a sense of why this guy is why he's doing what he's doing. Why is he a sex worker? He is built for the job that he needs to do. And you need to see that in order to believe it. And we don't really see that. No, we really don't.
Laura: She says a lot of nice things, but you don't really see it.
Ryan: There's no proof that he's good at what he does other than she keeps hiring him. A woman who is sexually inexperienced keeps on hiring him and says that he's doing a fantastic job when she's got no other frame of reference.
Laura: Yeah, obviously, he's going to be better than three pumps.
Ryan: Like I say, we get to the end of the movie where I guess she finally has a positivity about her own image. And she looks at herself in the mirror completely stark, bollock naked. So if you ever wanted to see Emma Thompson, who at this time currently you want to see her completely naked, then this is the end of this is the movie for you.
Laura: I guess I can appreciate the body positivity here. So it's body positivity strictly for Emma Thompson or her character. Not Emma Thompson. Emma Thompson's character, Nancy. So, you know, you've got this chiseled boy, like, forget to he doesn't need body A. You know, it's a story about getting older and you can still figure out who you are, and you can still have a good time and you can still have experiences and accept who you are. Accept your body, accept your desires and your pleasures, whatever they may be. And I think that's nice. She has a little smile and she's yeah, yeah, bitch, this is me and I'm into it. And she's finally accepting, like Nancy's finally accepting herself who she you know, this young man kind of helped her on that. You know, I think she inevitably was going to get there on her own, whether or not she hired a sex worker.
Ryan: Yeah, potentially. Um, yeah, the positivity, all that sort of thing. I don't have an issue with that. It's just kind of just I'm seeing a lot of Emma Thompson at this moment in time. You know what? You can you can get a greater sense of the positivity. She's now exhibiting from the beginning of the film till the end of the film by her wearing her clothes, by her attitude, by certain things that happen. Now, obviously, they have to fuck. Things have to happen in order for that. And then that's a very literal, very physical way of telling us that she's moved forward. Like she has progressed as a character. Right. But we've already kind of gotten a good hint of that from each of the meetings that have happened, where her makeup changes or the way that she dresses is different, where she's not so buttoned up. She's kind of a little bit more open and expressive and those sorts of things happen. So I don't know if we really need that end moment the way it is. Just for me, personally, I was kind of just like, oh, uh, you're just kind of milking it a little bit.
Laura: I think what I like is that it's nice to have different types of women on screen. And if you're going to do nudity, I think it's nice that you have different ages and shapes and I don't know, styles of women and men that get out there. And I think people, and not just women, are bombarded with images of people looking really nice and good all the time and there's no imperfections and everyone's young. But that's not the case. That's not reality. And it's it's just nice seeing, like a different representation of a woman naked in a film that you're like. And it didn't bother me at all. Um, I thought it was nice for the character.
Ryan: I'm going to say that this is nothing new, though. Like this generational gap, this sex positive. This is nothing new. I was thinking about in about Schmidt. I think it's Kathy Bates. And there's the scene with the hot tub. That's something that I feel like you've got two actors who are obviously very old and you're seeing and they're completely naked. And they're acting as if they're still young. And the way that they look does not directly reflect how they feel as people on the inside.
Laura: And there's another played for comedy it is.
Ryan: But then there's another film out there called, uh, The Mother, which is with Daniel Craig. And I think it's Anne Reed Roger Mitchell movie where Daniel Craig seduces the mother. Who's Anne Reed in that movie? And, uh, she starts to have a different perspective on how she looks and how she is. And her age is no longer the kind of prison that she's put herself in. Well, it's a slightly more nefarious thing because her family find out. They're like, what the fuck are you doing with my old mother? It's kind of like that. Um, so this isn't new. Um, so I just yeah, I don't know. I think there's other ways of portraying that idea from my perspective, personally.
Laura: Uh, yeah, I mean, you don't have to do what they did. It doesn't bother me how it was. But yeah, you don't have to have a penis in this movie. You don't have to have full female nudity in it either.
Ryan: It's a film about sex, really. I mean, that's kind of what it is. I mean, if you want to use Pretty Woman as an example, I mean, that horrible movie. Um, yes, there is a way that you do something like that that's relatively quite sedate. But then, obviously, you have other things, like, obviously, American jiggle, which is obviously a little bit darker. Um, so I guess you can laud the film a little bit for not really being it's not a film that's about oh, my God. The dark and seedy side of prostitution. There's not really any of that. He kind of refers to a lot of his stories in a positive manner because it's effectively about, uh, a client confidentiality. And obviously you don't kink shame, things like that. So he's able to kind of find a spot. But I don't think this story, uh, is particularly, uh uh, pardon the pun Grande uh, for everybody else, uh, working in the sex trade.
Ryan: Yes. I guess let's get to our ratings then. Yeah.
Laura: No, I'm not done yet. So this film did not hire an intimacy coordinator. Daryl, uh, McCormack said that we all collectively decided that it felt and this is nothing to say against intimacy coordinators, that there was such a connection between myself and Emma and Sophie that we didn't need one. Um, the final day of rehearsals were dedicated to the most intimate scenes. So with Emma and Daryl and Sophie, the director, they took big bits of paper out and they outlined their bodies, circling the parts that they liked. And, uh, Daryl McCormack said that the map of the body then led to us telling stories behind each thing. Then from there, the three of us took a layer of clothing off one by one and told stories about our bodies. It was a gentle, beautiful introduction for us to step into a place of vulnerability. It felt like complete freedom. Before we knew it, the three of us were naked. And it felt like we never even took our clothes off in the beginning. There was a level of comfort I've never experienced before. Okay, so they all got naked together and, um, had a fun naked best friend's jamboree.
Ryan: Nice.
Laura: Yeah.
Ryan: As, uh, you do well, I think.
Laura: That that's a good way to kind of set the tone. And so it's not on the day this is the first time you're seeing someone naked, because after a minute or so of being naked with somebody else, it doesn't mean anything. It's not shocking. Or the most shocking part is getting your clothes off in the first place.
Ryan: Yeah. I guess it's different for everybody. I've never had that issue, though. I've never had a problem just getting my clothes off.
Laura: Yeah, but you're also not on things typically when you're doing it.
Ryan: No, that's true. Yeah. Usually the cameraman's not there. Um, or unless he wants to be, uh.
Laura: Activity. Bring everyone in.
Ryan: That's it. Come in. Dave is like, I don't want to. I'm like, right, okay. Well, I'm really sorry. Dave.
Laura: Dave's, boundaries.
Ryan: Come on, Dave. Come on, Dave. We're, you know, weird. Stop being weird, Dave.
Laura: So, in terms of the rating, I'm ready to drop right in. So, for me, in terms of visibility and context, I'm really wavering between a three and a three and a half just because of, uh, the context alone. The context alone makes it a higher rating for me. Just because after all this time and all this chatter, you needed to do it, because you also cannot have Emma Thompson be completely naked, top to bottom, and not have this guy show full frontal. I just think that would be incredibly wrong. But he did, um, so maybe I'll just stick with three and a half, because it doesn't matter. But you don't see it for very long. It's barely on the screen. You get a hint with a turn, and then you get another shot that kind of just moves up to where it's just all pubes and up. So it is not on there for long enough, especially when you're kind of holding on Emma Thompson's character. But I guess the story is not about him, it's about her. But their balance could be a little bit better. But I'm still happy that it was there, at least, because that would have been a fricking travesty.
Ryan: So I take what you say and I expand on it a little bit.
Laura: Please do.
Ryan: So we talk about honesty and realism and all these sorts of things, and I think the film does a decent job of getting the chemistry right. I just would have preferred it, uh, to have a little bit more of an openness. Like I say, we don't really get a good sense or an idea of this man's skills as a sex worker. And supposedly he's incredibly high paid, and he's very good at what he does. He has multiple clients, clients that ask him back all the time. I never, at any point, got a real sense that he was actually good at what he does. And this moment, I feel like, is contextually. It makes sense, but it feels a little bit like a cop out. It feels a little bit like they're skirting around it. It kind of feels like they're deliberately trying to hide it, or at least he's doing a, um, move in such of a way, and they cut away from it too quickly, where it feels disingenuous. And this was the moment where I felt like, if we're seeing enough of Emma doing, uh, her thing, I want to see this guy doing his thing as well. And for the most part, the movie we're cutting away before they get down to the nitty gritty sex stuff, and they've kind of done nothing but kind of really talk and really get into. The nitty gritty of their lives and their conversations and things like that. But it struggles for me to not realize or at least not feel like it's kind of grossly imbalanced. And it kind of sways too far in one way, which, again, I feel like seems to be the pattern between, uh, these latest kind of, uh, streaming films that we've done is that the women are doing all the heavy lifting still. And then you have these guys who are very nice on the eye. Why are they not giving some of the weight to them? Why is there any these restrictions? Why do we feel like on these platforms, people have to be safe? Or is there a level of, like, we have to be safe because we don't want to upset people? Because on a streaming platform, it's more instantly available, more people are going to see it, we don't want to see the backlash. I don't really fully understand it. So as a characterization, like, as a strength, in terms of his characterization and of the storytelling, they've really missed the mark. I feel like, in terms of just giving us a good idea of what he is, and I think if they showed us a little bit more, we'd have a better idea of who he was as a person, and I would find it more believable. So you say three, three and a half, I say two.
Laura: That's fine. I agree with you. I don't disagree at all. I think that is a big problem, and I don't know who's to blame. I don't know who's, uh, making these decisions to cut away and to be shy about that. When you are given, from what I understand, a lot more freedom in terms of what your content and what you're.
Ryan: Putting out there, I don't think that the material itself is inherently quite filthy or trashy. It requires there to be like this because it goes far enough, at least with the sex in general, to where it is a little bit more realistic. And they're dealing with real life aspects of, say, how does a young man have sex with a woman who is a little bit older than him? And obviously very realistic, practical things, doesn't have the flexibility or, uh, the staying power of someone who's in their 20s. That is something that they at least kind of try and show. Um, but at the same time, again, it's like, yeah, Emma Thompson's doing of a lot of the heavy lifting.
Laura: Yeah. But they knew that going in. She was always going to do that with the film. And for everything.
Ryan: A real it just a real shame. And I think, honestly, if it's not Daryl's decision for that and for what we see in the film, then he's honestly done a gross injustice to that.
Laura: I do not think that it's him at all.
Ryan: No. I think he's been put in a little box, and it's like, look, you can't act outside, uh, of this box. You have to be this version of the Leo Grande character. We can't have you going too far outside of the realms of possibility. And I think more than ever, just looking at some of the films that we've covered, certainly these modern films that we've covered, uh, conservatism in cinema is coming back in a real big way.
Laura: Ah, yeah, it absolutely is. Even though we feel like we're gaining freedom. We are not.
Ryan: No.
Laura: Um, so in terms of the film, um, I'm going to go with two and a half because it's not and that's right down the middle for me. It's not bad. I don't love it. I don't want to watch it again.
Ryan: Yeah. This is on a five scale. So you, uh, think it's slightly above average.
Laura: Yeah, it's maybe more of a three, but three sounds too high because it's a little generous. It is generous because I don't think it's that great. And I do think I like the things that happened in it. I think the story is nice and the message is nice, but, uh, I'm not in love with it. It's fine. That's how I feel about this film.
Ryan: Yeah. So I'm kind of with you, but I give it like a two. Um, and I dock it more the same reasons you have. It is like the film is fine and it has a relatively okay message. And I think it's a good message for the modern time. The issue I have with it is it's barely cinematic. Just don't think, uh, it's good enough, really. Just think it's incredibly like it's stale. There's no kind of visual vibrancy. We think about the hotel rooms we saw in very different film, like the Doom generation. Right. They're really striking. Obviously, the style and stuff of that movie is very different to what we're kind of dealing with here. But you're kind of just like these are people who a woman who's talking about the banali of her life, and we're kind of surrounded by banali for the entirety of the film. There's a window that they look out periodically. At no point does the sun ever come out. You're like looking at it. You're like, wow. And there's a light changing thing. I've never seen that in a hotel room either before.
Laura: They never utilize it.
Ryan: They never utilize it. And to the point where you see it briefly and it's just like it's very tacky. Right? It's very tacky. But I mean, I like that sort of thing. Don't think that the film has enough going for it to substantially become anything interesting film wise. It's weird. It's such a weird thing.
Laura: Well, uh, thank you for being here with me today, Ryan, to talk about a stream peen and coming to you from a slightly boring hotel room in the midst of a hurricane.
Ryan: I've been laura, good luck to thank you. Yes. Uh, I was ryan, um, yes. Good luck to me, I guess.
Laura: Good luck to you.
Ryan: Yes.
Laura: Uh, bye.