The Big Picture

How to Have Sex brings a nuanced and realistic depiction of the trauma and confusion surrounding rape and sexual assault. The film exposes the toxic and sexualized culture of teenage party holidays and explores the pressure to have sex. Mia McKenna-Bruce delivers a powerful lead performance, supported by an exceptional cast, in this fearless and captivating film.

In last year’s teen romp, Bottoms, perhaps one of its most perceptive moments comes when CJ (Rachel Sennott) is forcibly trying to make a group of teenage girls bond over shared trauma. She casually asks the group who has been raped, and everyone awkwardly keeps their hand down. But then CJ tacks on with, “Gray area stuff counts too,” and like that, almost every hand is raised and nothing more is spoken of it. Rape, sexual assault, and sexual violence are all part of an important but deeply uncomfortable cultural conversation that has become more prevalent since the Me Too movement — and yet, the way that people, especially teens and young adults, try to speak about their own experiences or comfort their friends who have gone through similar ones is still severely stunted.

This bleeds into cinema and its depiction of rape and sexual assault. For years, rape was relegated to horror films where it was used as shock value. Thankfully, we’re getting more stories that look at the trauma that follows victims in nuanced ways, like Michaela Coel’s I May Destroy You or Promising Young Woman’s refreshing twist on the rape-revenge subgenre. Molly Manning Walker’s debut feature film, How to Have Sex — which premiered at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, where it won in the Un Certain Regard category — takes on all these issues in a style more akin to a documentary. Although it deals with these hefty themes, it astutely juxtaposes the fear and anxiety around sex and the harmful culture that makes it difficult for sexual assault victims to speak up against the all-consuming and intoxicating fun of being 16 and away from parents for the first time.

How to Have Sex Three British teenage girls go on a rites-of-passage holiday – drinking, clubbing and hooking up, in what should be the best summer of their lives. Release Date February 2, 2024 Director Molly Manning Walker Cast Anna Antoniades , Mia McKenna-Bruce , Lara Peake , Enva Lewis Runtime 91 minutes Main Genre Drama Writers Molly Manning Walker

What Is ‘How to Have Sex’ About?
Our protagonist is Tara (Mia McKenna-Bruce in a career-making performance), who is on holiday in a party town on the Greek island of Crete. For North American readers, think spring break — but when you’re 16, not 21. Tara and her two best friends, Skye (Lara Peake) and Em (Enva Lewis), have just finished their GCSE school exams, and tradition states that the only way to wait for exam results is to spend a few days sharing one bed in a party hotel, surviving off chips and cheap vodka and trying to get as much action as possible. The acerbic Skye is the dominant member of the group who knows exactly what she wants and how to get it, while Em is the softer, kinder friend to Tara. They love each other and gas each other up before they go out, but Skye subtly makes comments to break down Tara’s confidence — like trying to make it known that Tara is still a virgin when they’re pre-drinking with their new friends, Paddy (Samuel Bottomley), Badger (Shaun Thomas), and Paige (Laura Ambler).

Right from the start, the girls argue out of exhaustion from their early morning flight, which quickly shifts to manic excitement as they go for a dip in the sea. Manning Walker grabs the audience and pulls them into the chaos as a fourth member of the gang. With How to Have Sex, she is following in the footsteps of other Brit directors who buck Hollywood tropes and glossiness to try to put a microscope on everyday, ordinary human stories. This movie distinctly feels like a more contemporary, younger sister to Andrea Arnold’s American road trip film, American Honey; the nihilism of youth is just a jumping-off point for the protagonists to discover that all the glitter, alcohol, and dancing cannot keep the horrors of life at bay. Like Mike Leigh’s films, much of How to Have Sex is a series of back-and-forth between the characters, drunkenly expressing love for each other, exchanges of dad jokes, and awkward mumblings of banter and flirtations. This naturalistic approach to the dialogue is most felt in the moments when so much needs to be said, but none of the characters possess the right words.

‘How to Have Sex’ Is Rooted in Realism

How to Have Sex doesn’t aim to incite a certain emotion; it just wants to show that underbelly of young fun that all other coming-of-age films replace with formulaic somber storylines of dismissive parents. The very effective filmmaking tool of “show don’t tell” is at the forefront of Manning Walker’s approach. The film is constantly shifting gears from electric party sequences depicting youth in its most primal form to the quiet in-between moments of getting ready and smoking on the balcony to the film’s eventual darker sequences that are presented so plainly, without any warning, that it’s a shock to the system. How to Have Sex is a 90-minute rollercoaster, with some exhilarating highs and more than a few vomit-inducing lows.

As the title suggests, this film deals with sex, but for any viewers thinking this can offer them a raunchy good time, this is not American Pie Crosses the Pond. How to Have Sex aims to confront the disparity between our expectations of sex and the act itself. Right from the start, we see how ingrained this overwhelming culture of sex permeates these types of party holidays. We hear it in the girls’ conversations — whoever gets laid gets the bed, and everyone else is relegated to the floor. Skye weaponizes Tara’s virginity to break her down. The pressure to have and love sex is felt from all sides, and as the film goes on, we witness what happens when the expectation around sex collides with the lack of education, language, and basic understanding of what sex (and more importantly, consent) actually is.

Scenes of party games, consisting of men pouring cans of cheap beer out of their shorts into girls’ open mouths, reiterate just how forcibly sexualized the culture of party holidays is. It’s the backdrop that has forced young men and women to feel that they must have sex, otherwise this whole holiday is a complete waste. But then you see that the moments of the most fun are just them drinking, chatting, and dancing. Would they have all had a much better time if they all didn’t feel so obligated to think that sex is the be-all and end-all? As Tara and Badger are about to have a tender, intimate moment, it’s interrupted by the booming voices of the party reps calling young men onto the stage to get their dicks sucked.

Related The Best Sex Scenes Aren’t Pointless, They Do Important Character Work It’s not just about the smut, there’s something deeper at work.

The film is careful not to slutshame — Em and Paige making out in the club is a nice reminder of how these holidays can make space for a horny good time — but it does expose how sex is brought into the consciousness of young people in such an uneducated, and, quite frankly, fucked up way. One particular scene underscores this when Skye and Tara are minding their business and dancing away from the crowd. A silent guy walks up and starts grinding on Skye, and she looks to Tara for her silent approval before turning around to kiss him. It’s like watching a David Attenborough nature show — no words, no introductions, no easing into it. Again, the film doesn’t shame anyone; kissing strangers can be fun as long as everyone feels comfortable, but the forcible way sex is shoved in people’s faces the second they hit adolescence, with barely any real-world education to go along with it, is the driving force for the film’s darkest moments. Sex is meant to be fun and positive — and How To Have Sex tries to confront all the ways that can become lost on young people.

‘How to Have Sex’ Is a Reminder That Cinema Needs to Talk About Sex
Image via Mubi

The film builds up to two incidents that Tara has with a guy she meets on the holiday. The first may have been consensual, but that doesn’t prevent the confusing and numbing feelings that can follow. It’s hard for films to present sex in ways other than passionate lovemaking, awkward but funny fumbling, or, way at the other end of the spectrum, violent rapes and attacks. Again, the film makes a point of showing Tara saying yes, but just because you wanted it, does not mean you automatically enjoy it, and your feelings are valid whatever they are. The second incident is a different story, a painfully slow build-up to a moment that you start to expect. Manning Walker resists any urge to paint the assault as black-and-white. It shows how easily assaults can occur — they can happen in a matter of seconds, when a group of people are next door, and between two people who have consented before.

When Tara goes through these unthinkable experiences with no one to truly care for her, all you want to do is reach in, grab her, and hold her. Tara, nor her friends, have the education or language to know how to deal with these things, so she catatonically sits there, with no one to tell her what to do, while her rapist kisses her on the head. Her trauma is battered further by her friends’ constant questions about how “good” he was. It makes for a visceral movie experience, one that renders the audience helpless. By the end, it’s apparent that this is more of a forcing-of-age story, as you realize that the film was never about parties, holidays, or Tara losing her virginity — it’s about its lead’s slow, painful, and bruising introduction to how cruel the world can be, and how unprepared she is for it.

The Cast of ‘How to Have Sex’ Is Spectacular, Especially Mia McKenna-Bruce

The entire cast of young performers is exceptional. Lara Peake is sensational at using only her eyes to tell you everything you need to know about Skye. She isn’t an out-and-out villain, but her subtle, calculated manipulation of Tara and the others adds to the building tension. Mia McKenna-Bruce rarely gets a break, as this is entirely her film and she is asked to shift gears constantly, going from masking a world of emotional pain to bursting into fits of laughter with her friends within seconds. The script demands a lot from its performers, replacing dialogue and monologues with quick flashes over the face, and McKenna-Bruce rarely misses. It’s a shattering performance that the weight of the film rests on, and McKenna-Bruce carries it to the bitter (but also hopeful) end.

How to Have Sex is a fearless, uncomfortable, and mesmerizing watch from start to finish. It lures you in under the guise that you are going to watch a bunch of teens and young people get drunk and get laid. However, a lot of viewers will know the anxiety that comes from party holidays (I got war flashbacks of my own post-school holiday on a Greek island when I was 18). How to Have Sex takes a setting and concept that viewers know to be fun, horny, and exciting, and reveals the dark underbelly that so many young people have had to grapple with. With sexual abuse being such a prominent topic of conversation worldwide, it’s films like these that remind us we have so much further to go — but it also shows us that we are on the right path.

How to Have Sex REVIEWHow to Have Sex is a shattering, mesmerizing debut that brings a nuanced understanding of the impact of assault. ProsMollly Manning Walker brings an immersive and compelling viewing experience with her debut feature. Mia McKenna-Bruce gives a career-defining lead performance that is surrounded by an electric and confident cast. The film tackles difficult subject matter such as sexual abuse with nuance and care, accompanied by Manning Walker’s masterful direction.

How to Have Sex premieres in theaters on February 2 in the U.S. Click below for showtimes.

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