Like any group of enthusiastic youngsters heading out on the ostensible “holiday of a lifetime,” it’s obvious that the heroines of How to Have Sex are not destined to have a good time on their trip. In her energetic but nerve-wracking directorial debut, Molly Manning Walker has made no bones about the purpose of her film. Taken in umbrella terms, it’s a story about consent, but also specifically the ways in which adolescent expectations of sex, whether that be as a rite-of-passage or simply for pleasure, are threaded into the very fabric of youth culture. It’s like a reverse version of one of those awful straight-to-DVD American Pie sequels that came out in the mid-2000s (think, American Pie: European Spring Break – Virgin Edition). The unambiguous power structures implied by exaggerated sex acts are present everywhere our teenage protagonists look. From the drinking games they play to the unmistakably phallic shape of the hotel’s pool, How to Have Sex isn’t a manual, but it is laying the groundwork for how society often teaches teenagers to engage with intimacy.
16-year-old Tara (Mia McKenna-Bruce) has more than a few things on her mind when she arrives in Heraklion for a pre-college holiday with her two best friends, Skye (Lara Peake) and Em (Enva Lewis). For one, she feels dumber than her companions, confident in her belief that she’s failed an important test related to college admissions. A lesser worry: she’s never had sex, a rite of passage into adulthood she hopes to experience on the trip. After a chaotic night out, the trio quickly befriend a group of hard-partying college students across the way from their hotel room, including jokester Badger (Shaun Thomas), Paddy (Samuel Bottomley) and Paige (Laura Ambler). Initially unbridled, Tara becomes increasingly alienated as the week unfolds, the drunken landscape of each sleepless night revealing a more muddled, and eerily surreal, portrait of the expectations she thought she understood.
Based purely on description, How to Have Sex sounds like an edgy afterschool special – that’s not how it acts in practice. Its conclusions are obvious, but the film is subtler than its title would let on; Walker’s penchant for cinematic naturalism goes a long way towards fleshing out the central characters beyond their insecurities and traumas. Unsurprisingly, Walker has cited social realist filmmaker Andrea Arnold as a major influence on her work. Arnold, whose impressive catalog includes Fish Tank and American Honey, has frequently depicted the harsh realities of coming-of-age as a young woman in modern society. Walker borrows liberally from Arnold’s uncompromising naturalism, but also shows a similar knack for creating tangible atmospheres for her characters to inhabit. The performances, particularly by McKenna-Bruce, Peake, and Thomas, have a credible looseness to them indicative of a well-run set, in which sensitive material was handled with care – necessary for a film that contends heavily with teenage sexuality and assault. This is not a Larry Clark production.
Where How to Have Sex really shines is in its depiction of tenuous adolescent friendship, in which kinship, especially by gender, can often be mixed with cutting passive aggression. This is particularly present in the relationship between Tara and Skye, which is marked by subtle jabs and belittlement under the guise of jest. Not only is Skye constantly pressuring Tara to have sex but shows little regard when her friend presents signs of assault-based trauma following a night of heavy drinking. Whether motivated by jealousy or pure obliviousness, Skye is a fantastically frustrating character, as well as a realistic one. There’s plenty of humor to be found throughout, though, whether that be in the film’s gentle subversion of audience expectations regarding Badger, or the litany of absurd (and it must be said, occasionally grotesque) drinking games that pervade the island’s youth drinking culture. That’s not to mention Walker’s authentically slang-driven dialogue, dense enough in its verbiage to necessitate subtitles at the critic screening. The 26-year-old McKenna-Bruce, despite appearing slightly older than her character’s age, is a very convincing teenager. The casting is generally spot-on throughout.
Perhaps inevitably, given how well it generally tiptoes the line between subtlety and didacticism, the film eventually falters at its conclusion. Remember how the story doesn’t feel like an afterschool special? Well, that’s mostly the case, except for one important scene. A pivotal final moment in an airport terminal wraps things up too easily, giving way to a final gesture (“it’s ok not to be ok,” essentially) and needle drop that comes at a tonal disadvantage. It’s by no means movie-ruining, but caps off the narrative’s gradual build in underwhelming fashion. McKenna-Bruce’s portrayal of a teenage girl trying to subdue and rationalize her traumatic experience is genuinely heartbreaking, perhaps in ways Walker’s script isn’t prepared to contend with. How to Have Sex is exactly what you’d expect it to be, but it displays an authentic subtlety and attention to detail that makes the film amount to more than its message. No film, especially of this nature, should bear the responsibility of fixing the problem it presents. What you do get is a sense of reality crashing in, and the uneasy conflicts and misalignments left in its wake. What a way to grow up.
Photo courtesy of MUBI
The post How to Have Sex appeared first on Spectrum Culture.