31/01/24

Mubi

Molly Manning Walker’s debut film comes screeching onto the screen like, well, a trio of teenage girls. Tara (Mia McKenna-Bruce), Em (Enva Lewis) and Skye (Lara Peake) have just finished their GCSEs and now they’re in Malia, buoyant, excited and ready to cut loose. They’re looking at seven days of sheer, unadulterated hedonism. And, as Skye keeps reminding her, Tara needs to seize the opportunity to lose her virginity.

At its heart, How to Have Sex is about peer pressure. The holiday resort’s formulaic enforced ‘fun’ doesn’t leave much space for dissent, especially when you’re sixteen and desperate to fit in. The girls really enjoy their first night, getting drunk, doing bad karaoke and eating cheesy chips, but the following morning, hungover, Skye puts the kibosh on all that. “We’re not going to get laid if we stick together all the time,” she says.

And from then on, Tara stumbles, adrift.

McKenna-Bruce is perfectly cast as Tara: all big eyes and yearning, wanting to find her place in the world. Meanwhile, Peake deftly captures Skye’s insecurity-turned-meanness, while Lewis shines as the only one of the three who is at ease with herself: unlike her friends, she knows who she is and what she wants. She’s got the grades, the career plan – and she’s comfortable with her sexuality, enjoying her holiday fling with Paige (Laura Ambler), their next-door neighbour at the hotel.

Paige’s room-mates are Badger (Shaun Thomas) and Paddy (Samuel Bottomley). There’s an unmistakable spark of attraction between Tara and Badger, but they’re both quite shy and soft underneath their brash surfaces – and swept along by the pressure to conform. They’d clearly like to be together but instead, hyped up by a baying nightclub mob, he goes onstage for an unsatisfactory public blow job, while she endures a miserable first shag with Paddy.

Molly Manning Walker convincingly evokes the teenage experience, and I especially like Tara’s palpable sense of not fitting in, not being able to enjoy herself in the same way as the others appear to be doing. Despite its in-your-face appearance, the film is actually pretty nuanced, the emotional and social complexity acknowledged and explored.

My only bugbear is a petty one: why are they talking about “getting ten As” when GCSEs have been graded by number since 2019?

Nitpicks aside, How to Have Sex is a sweeter, more engaging and thought-provoking film than its name and cover-image might suggest. Much like its characters.

If, like us, you missed this movie’s fleeting cinema release, you’ll be pleased to know that you can now catch it on Mubi.

4 stars

Susan Singfield