Review: How to Have Sex

The evocatively titled How to Have Sex (2023) is a tour-de-force debut that speaks, with great nuance, to the clubbing and drinking culture of today. Its cast is perfect: Mia McKenna Bruce gives one of the best performances of the year, her character Tara a strong and well-written protagonist. A refreshing culmination of many current topics, the film gives space to the taboo and hard-to-talk-about in a non-judgmental way.

This is writer/director Molly Manning Walker’s first feature-length film, although she is a key part of the recent new wave of female directors, having worked as cinematographer on Charlotte Regan’s Scrapper (2023). In an interview with BFI, Manning Walker spoke on the film’s title, saying it is intended to provoke thought on how ‘we [think] we [are] meant to have sex in a certain way’. She seeks to wipe the slate of preconception clean, and does so magnificently.

Mia McKenna Bruce gives one of the best performances of the year

Samuel Bottomly, who plays the misguided Paddy, has brought up pornography as one of the many reason’s today’s conceptions of sex, virginity and the loss of it can be so twisted. Paddy is certainly a victim of this, and it is easy to see how things like porn, social media and lad culture can influence young men like him – ‘everyone knows a Paddy’, after all.

What How to Have Sex attempts to do is to undermine its own title: there is no handbook or set of instructions for something as important as sex (or at least how important it can seem). The film does an excellent job of portraying the unexpected isolation the supposedly most intimate thing can cause, with its careful pacing allowing moments to breathe between moments of partying.

How to Have Sex starts with the sounds of a plane landing, with unseen lads chanting over a flight announcement. Tara, Em (Enva Lewis), and Skye (Lara Peake) are first seen in a taxi to their hotel, having just finished their GCSE’s and partaking in their first girl’s holiday to celebrate. Familiar to many, the Girl’s Holiday is famous for its status as a coming-of-age ritual, making and breaking friendships. Indeed, although the trio claim to be ‘best friends forever’, there is a subtle tension between the girls. Skye especially pressures the girls to ‘get laid’ and mocks Tara for being a virgin, speaking aloud the invisible pressure that haunts their hotel. When Tara meets Badger (Sean Thomas) on the balcony and they hit it off, the girls form a flimsy friendship with their hotel neighbours. They lie about their ages (they are but sixteen), whilst Badger and his friends Paddy and Paige (Laura Ambler) are clearly older.

What How to Have Sex attempts to do is to undermine its own title

The girls’ naivety and teenage insecurities uncomfortably contrast their actions. They drink incessantly, stopping only for a hit of cheesy chips- you can feel their hangovers through their screen. The film’s setting of Greek party town Malia feels overrun by British tourists, who shout in supermarkets and chain-smoke in neon clothing. The girls are eager to fit in, revelling in the hedonism of Brits abroad unleashed. The world of the film feels desolate despite how busy it is, with disorienting lights and pumping, bassy music mimicking Tara’s drunk spinning and anxious breathing. When day comes, the streets are empty and littered with debris from the night before- night overruns day as the girls experience party culture at its best and worst.

Verdict:

The film ends as it starts, with the girls in a taxi, heading to the airport. It winds down with a sense of hope and excitement as Tara and Em run towards the plane they are late for: much the same, but changed forever. How to Have Sex is a stunning and emotionally vast debut that was desperately needed. It offers a comforting message in Tara’s loveable character, suggesting that although some things that cannot be reversed, it is possible to overcome them.