How to Have Sex utilizes director Molly Manning Walker’s keen visual mastery paired with really strong leading performances to create a harrowing coming-of-age tale, steeped in dangerous reality. It depicts fragments of a terrifying and uncomfortable reality weighed under the assumption that adolescence is supposed to be the best time of one’s life. The film is cooked in this palpable feeling of dread and displacement unique to teenage girlhood; that you are supposed to be enjoying yourself and you are supposed to be happy, and deep down you sense you are in the wrong place doing the wrong thing, but there is nothing you can do to get out of it. How to Have Sex feels like a horror film, drenched in suspense yet there is no killer lurking in the shadows, instead it permeates the entire vacation, basking in plain sight.
Disguised under the title, How to Have Sex may, at first glance, feel like a standard coming-of-age story, complete with neon-lit party sensibilities and laughable drunken antics. But a dangerous sense of unease rattles and creeps in during each scene. The film begins with three best friends – Tara (Mia McKenna-Bruce), Skye (Lara Peake), and Em (Enva Lewis) – on vacation in Malia, Crete. Em plans to go off to college in the fall, and Skye and Tara are far more uncertain of their futures the summer after high school, eager for one big, adventurous vacation. Tara, played with so much heart and empathy by McKenna-Bruce, is riddled with feelings of insecurity, especially in comparison to that of her friends. Though the chemistry between the girls is sweet, more attention could have been given to that of Skye and Em; their backgrounds, motivations, and fears are not as profoundly evident as that of Tara, which would have added more interesting commentary to the film. Still, Tara’s storyline as the girls (and the boys they meet) circle around her, is superbly done, a coming-of-age parable both personal and universal.
The narrative is structured around an instance of sexual assault, with each moment feeling like it could veer into danger. Straying from filmic traditions of warping consent, How to Have Sex criticizes the minimization and normalization of any form of sexual assault. It is harrowing and devastating, and made even more effective by the chilling mood throughout, asserting that the ambivalence and ignorance of modern rape culture exists in actions big and small.
Manning Walker’s history as a cinematographer is stunningly evident in her directing here. The camera spectates, playing the role of a vacationer itself; it enters slightly voyeuristic, albeit well-intentioned, framing the girls with an equal mix of caution and support. It sears the horrific actions, lack of empathy, and disregard for consent that surround Tara, while framing her with compassion and understanding.
The film is a harrowing depiction of the nightmares that plague a female bildungsroman, with unshakable feelings of danger and discomfort, wrought comparison and a desire to finally be grown up, to embody the person you dreamed you would be. Near the end of the film, Tara’s friend Skye slumps down on the bed in delirious half-drunk half-hungover exhaustion, and says “I love you, mate. Best vacation ever.” It’s darkly ironic, invoking the depressing revelation that this has been quite the opposite for Tara. That in a multitude of ways, the ideal of coming-of-age parties and joys is more of a facade, an unattainable dream of feeling cool and fitting in, while the future crumbles before you. Skye’s short line here encapsulates the thesis of the film, as her behavior throughout has been mean and pressurizing towards Tara, now glazing over it with a drunken feign of love for her friend. The film criticizes this hypocrisy, as Skye participates in it, and as society exhibits it in the casual normalization of assault and sexual harassment in popular culture, glazed over with fanciful apologies and hopes that all will be forgotten.
How to Have Sex is a phenomenal directorial debut by Manning Walker, fit with visceral performances and a really empathetic, powerful cinematic gaze. It rejects the rape culture that plagues both reality and fiction, in mainstream depictions of parties and growing up, with unshakable empathy for victims and all girls wrought with fears of the future and the dangerous desire to fit in and grow up.
How to Have Sex
2023
dir. Molly Manning Walker
91 min.
Opens Friday, 2/9 @ Alamo Drafthouse Seaport
