“If you don’t get laid on this holiday then you never will!” says one of the hard-partying teenage girls in British witer-director Molly Manning Walker’s arrestingly titled debut How to Have Sex as they begin their sun-drenched, booze-soaked, coming-of-age adventures. It sounds like both a promise and a threat. Ultimately, it proves to be both.
Screening this week in El Gouna film festival in Egypt, How to Have Sex is a highly assured and superbly acted first feature from cinematographer turned director Walker, who was just 29 when she made it. After winning the Un Certain Regard Prize in Cannes, where it was bought by boutique distributor MUBI, it has since accumulated many more awards and accolades, including the Discovery Prize at the 36th European Film Awards last week. Part of a buzzy rising wave of young British women film-makers, Walker also served as cinematographer on another of this year’s much-feted debuts, Charlotte Regan’s Sundance prize-winner Scrapper.
Walker’s timely, impressively nuanced, very #MeToo meditation on sexual consent and gender politics comes smartly packaged as a lively, funny, warmly human depiction of three British teenage girls on the giddy cusp of womanhood. The setting is Malia on the Greek island of Crete, a garish party resort known for catering to younger crowds, mostly binge-drinking Brits. Arriving to celebrate the end of their final school exams, 16-year-old Tara (Mia McKenna-Bruce), Skye (Lara Peake) and Em (Enva Lewis) fling themselves into a never-ending whirl of chain smoking, clubbing, skinny-dipping, singing off-key karaoke and getting obliterated on cheap booze. But behind all this brash gonzo hedonism, Tara is anxiously weighing up mounting peer pressure to finally lose her virginity.
Initially passing themselves off as 18-year-old college students, Tara and Em begin cautiously flirting with the two older boys in their adjoining hotel room, a heavily tattooed joker nicknamed “Badger” (Shaun Thomas) and his more quietly self-assured pal Paddy (Samuel Bottomley). A sweet mutual attraction between Tara and Badger soon develops, played out through a riot of all-day drinking, late-night clubs and bawdy party games which sometimes spill over into live sex shows. An understated holiday romance also blossoms between Skye and the boys’ third room-mate Paige (Laura Ambler), a subplot that might once have fuelled an entire film about illicit queer desire, but which feels pleasingly matter-of-fact in 2023 eliciting no comment from the other protagonists.
How to Have Sex shifts tone midway though, when Tara gives in to sexual advances that she has not really solicited, and is too inexperienced to rebuff. Walker underscores this transition with a stark switch in audio and visual grammar, moving from fast-cut, sense-blurring, music-driven overload to a more contemplative mix of slow zooms, ominous absences and fragmentary flashbacks. Viewed in the harsh morning-after daylight, the main late-night party street of Malia suddenly looks like a trashed, deserted war zone. A very powerful change in emotional weather, all achieved without explanatory dialogue.
The events depicted in How to Have Sex have autobiographical resonance for Walker, who went on several similarly messy sunshine holidays in her teenage years. She was also sexually assaulted at 16 after her drink was spiked on a night out in London. And yet, refreshingly, she does not paint a simplistic binary picture of male predators and female victims here. The boys are generally likeable, their actions are just shaped by a hypersexualised youth culture where entitlement and subtle coercion are normalised. The girls have agency and outward self-confidence, but they are also assailed by constant societal pressure to be attractive, popular, and easygoing about sex.
Walker bravely explores the liminal zones of sexual consent here, where emotional context matters more than words spoken, and where even a half-grudging “yes” can mask a contradictory tangle of fearful doubts and uneven power games. Every woman watching these scenes will recognise this scenario, and most will have experienced something similar. When the director screened How to Have Sex to schools, she understandably met with heated debate and polarised views about whether the film even depicts an actual assault.
With its relentless first-act focus on boorish teenage pleasure-seeking, deafening dance music and alcoholic excess, How To Have Sex may alienate older viewers who find its message obvious and its adolescent milieu too limited. That said, one of the film’s core strengths is that is never feels like a preachy, glum, issue-driven drama, because it emphatically is not. However serious the main theme, the wider story is also a celebration of female friendship, solidarity and resilience, even in the face of bittersweet life lessons and bitchy mean-girl shade-throwing. Very strong performances, especially from rising star McKenna-Bruce, are also key selling points. Before the shoot, Walker spent weeks partying and bonding with cast and crew, creating a close-knit chemistry that pays off on screen.
How to Have Sex has a seductively rich, super-saturated, neon-drenched look. Walker and her documentary-trained cinematographer Nicolas Canniccioni create such an authentically sweaty, sun-soaked, immersive portrait of Malia’s hedonistic holiday hotspots, it comes as a surprise to discover they actually shot the film off-season in chilly November with an army of extras. George Buxton’s vivid costume choices are both visually and dramatically smart too, often putting actors in clothes that were wrongly sized or uncomfortable, heightening the sense that these young women are not fully at ease performing their assigned roles in the male-gaze marketplace.
Director, screenwriter: Molly Manning Walker
Cast: Mia McKenna-Bruce, Lara Peake, Samuel Bottomley, Shaun Thomas, Enva Lewis, Laura Ambler
Cinematography: Nicolas Canniccioni
Editing: Fin Oates
Music: James Jacob
Costume designer: George Buxton
Production companies: Film4 (UK), BFI (UK), MK2 (France), Head Gear Films (UK), Metrol Technology (UK), Heretic (Greece)
World sales: MK2
Venue: El Gouna Film Festival
In English
91 minutes
