Film Review — How to Have Sex

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Abstract

cured with more booze, more partying, and mutual determination to get laid. This is all well and good for the more experienced Skye and Em, but Tara is a virgin, and keen to shed herself of that status. Into this charged mix enter a neighbouring group of young people at their hotel: Paddy (Samuel Bottomley), Badger (Shaun Thomas), and Paige (Laura Ambler).</p><p id="a8e2">The latter has a gay fling with Em, and Badger and Tara seem attracted at first, but a myriad of tiny things trip up potential physical interaction, and it soon becomes evident they crave friendship more than anything. In the meantime, signs of strain begin to appear between Tara and Skye, with the latter evidently jealous of the sexual attention received by the former. Also, circling like a vulture is the boorish Paddy, who has his eyes on Tara.</p><p id="f7ce">In the wrong hands, this could have been a shrill, irritating film full of annoying extrovert narcissist teens egged on by remorselessly upbeat holiday reps. But Walker creates strong empathy for Tara, especially in the second half of the film, as the aforementioned issues of coercion versus consent come to the fore. It explores this bluntly and honestly, but without exploitation, sentimentality, or coming-of-age clichés.</p><p id="fdfd">Mia McKenna-Bruce’s outstandingly subtle performance provides the beating heart of the film, as her inexperience, nervousness, uncertainty, and vulnerability are conveyed with nuanced looks and expressions, with much left unsaid. It’s a performance that will doubtless remind many of their teenage years, causing a reckoning with past partying events tha

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t perhaps shouldn’t be remembered through rose-tinted spectacles.</p><p id="17b8">As for younger people in the audience, this film provides much food for thought around the issues it raises. Not just the question of sexual consent, peer pressure, and individual responsibility, but what happens when one’s friends are known to behave badly. At what point does inaction become complicity? The film doesn’t necessarily offer easy answers, but it does provide a framework for discussion.</p><p id="0a6b">At the same time, this isn’t a needlessly bleak film. Rather, it’s a warts-and-all depiction of the highs and lows of a time in one’s life when perhaps one wishes to temporarily escape potentially devastating A-level results and throw caution to the wind. Even if there is an important internal conversation Tara needs to have about what really happened, and how she wants to remember certain events, there’s a sense that she will emerge from the experience stronger and wiser, alongside friends who genuinely care for her. In that respect, <i>How to Have Sex</i> feels authentic, compassionate, compelling, and certainly worthy of recommendation.</p><h1 id="952a">The Dillon Empire beyond Medium</h1><figure id="efec"><img src="https://cdn-images-1.readmedium.com/v2/resize:fit:800/0*N2edY0fQaTe37adZ.png"><figcaption></figcaption></figure><figure id="1ebf"><img src="https://cdn-images-1.readmedium.com/v2/resize:fit:800/0*4N5RAjl4ykV6BGqj.png"><figcaption></figcaption></figure><figure id="c071"><img src="https://cdn-images-1.readmedium.com/v2/resize:fit:800/0*aMx4qr6geAI6vHiX.png"><figcaption></figcaption></figure></article></body>

Molly Manning Walker’s examination of teenage friendship, partying, and sexual consent proves honest, unsentimental, and thought-provoking

Credit: Mubi

No, this isn’t a porn film. Nor is it one of those “medically instructive” videos like The Lover’s Guide that appeared in the early 1990s, much to the chortling delight of teenagers who could now look at hardcore sexual imagery hitherto unpermitted in the UK, under the guise of “education”. Instead, How to Have Sex is a vibrant, energetic, realistic celebration of teenage partying and female friendship, whilst putting peer pressure and grey areas of sexual consent under the microscope with forthright honesty.

Written and directed by Molly Manning Walker, her debut film charts the holiday shenanigans of Tara (Mia McKenna-Bruce), Skye (Lara Peake), and Em (Enva Davis), who arrive at a garish Crete tourist destination ready to behave as the English do abroad. With manic, sun-drenched, bass-thumping energy, the film charts their journey from plane to hotel, to bars, and to swim in the sea. It’s an immersive, strobe-light-punctuated spectacle joyously infused with terrifyingly bad karaoke and cheerfully drunken BFF bonding over post-nightclub cheesy chips.

Walker’s restless, frequently handheld camera captures the trio’s hair-of-a-dog determination to have a good time, as hangovers are cured with more booze, more partying, and mutual determination to get laid. This is all well and good for the more experienced Skye and Em, but Tara is a virgin, and keen to shed herself of that status. Into this charged mix enter a neighbouring group of young people at their hotel: Paddy (Samuel Bottomley), Badger (Shaun Thomas), and Paige (Laura Ambler).

The latter has a gay fling with Em, and Badger and Tara seem attracted at first, but a myriad of tiny things trip up potential physical interaction, and it soon becomes evident they crave friendship more than anything. In the meantime, signs of strain begin to appear between Tara and Skye, with the latter evidently jealous of the sexual attention received by the former. Also, circling like a vulture is the boorish Paddy, who has his eyes on Tara.

In the wrong hands, this could have been a shrill, irritating film full of annoying extrovert narcissist teens egged on by remorselessly upbeat holiday reps. But Walker creates strong empathy for Tara, especially in the second half of the film, as the aforementioned issues of coercion versus consent come to the fore. It explores this bluntly and honestly, but without exploitation, sentimentality, or coming-of-age clichés.

Mia McKenna-Bruce’s outstandingly subtle performance provides the beating heart of the film, as her inexperience, nervousness, uncertainty, and vulnerability are conveyed with nuanced looks and expressions, with much left unsaid. It’s a performance that will doubtless remind many of their teenage years, causing a reckoning with past partying events that perhaps shouldn’t be remembered through rose-tinted spectacles.

As for younger people in the audience, this film provides much food for thought around the issues it raises. Not just the question of sexual consent, peer pressure, and individual responsibility, but what happens when one’s friends are known to behave badly. At what point does inaction become complicity? The film doesn’t necessarily offer easy answers, but it does provide a framework for discussion.

At the same time, this isn’t a needlessly bleak film. Rather, it’s a warts-and-all depiction of the highs and lows of a time in one’s life when perhaps one wishes to temporarily escape potentially devastating A-level results and throw caution to the wind. Even if there is an important internal conversation Tara needs to have about what really happened, and how she wants to remember certain events, there’s a sense that she will emerge from the experience stronger and wiser, alongside friends who genuinely care for her. In that respect, How to Have Sex feels authentic, compassionate, compelling, and certainly worthy of recommendation.