Review: How to Have Sex

Directed by: Molly Manning Walker

Written by: Molly Manning Walker

Starring: Mia McKenna-Bruce, Lara Peake, Samuel Bottomley, Shaun Thomas, Enva Lewis

Rating: [3.5/5]

With the way purity culture has made girls losing their virginity some life-altering significant moment, you could understand why girls would want it to be special. Well, when it happens in adolescence and it involves teenage boys the odds of something special dwindles rapidly as displayed in the harrowing How to Have Sex. A film that makes you question what in the world do girls like about guys because we can be the worst. 

Going on holiday with her friends on a Greek island, Tara (Mia McKenna-Bruce) hopes to have the best summer of their lives where they hope to get in some good clubbing, drinking, and hooking up. As they interact with various groups of individuals, the trio of girls hang with a group of guys who Tara keeps eyeing as who could potentially be her first sexual experience. 

Not that the British ever want to have this general perception of poshness placed upon them as seen in many popular forms of art, but nothing squashes the fantasy of a Mr. Darcy quicker than watching how teenage Brits act. A complete detachment of reality compared to what people dream about when they think of the English, at least here in America, where it mostly centers on the royal family and perhaps Downton Abbey. If anything, How to Have Sex displays a more realistic if not honest look at an experience not just encountered by British girls but adolescents everywhere. The universality of it makes this feature feel like a horror film at times, and certainly leaves an impact. 

While delving into many uncomfortable moments, this feature also contains plenty of joviality to it when this trio of friends hang out. Everything happening at the very beginning where they land on the Greek island, Malia, and dream about the incredible fun they are going to have together on this holiday. It also serves as another reminder of my jealousy that people in Europe can just casually catch a cheap flight to Greece for what amounts to a glorified weekend. All of this optimism surrounds the experience they anticipate for themselves but for Tara it mostly lies on her having sex for the first time, which gets made evidently clear given her other friends have already lost their virginity. Tara’s mix of nervousness and excitement follows the typical big talk by teens followed by fear when the moments arise, but it digs into something real. While Tara feels she needs to get this done, it’s inherently dangerous for her as a sixteen-year-old to find herself in any sexual encounter with someone she has just met. It brings out a vulnerability that Mia McKenna-Bruce excels in displaying through her performance. 

On a visual level, this feature does an excellent job in capturing moments of excitement and frankness in a very direct manner. This feature gets filmed in a fairly personal manner as we follow Tara through this experience. We ride with her the entire time and the moments where it cuts away from her has such a devastating intentionality to it. In her directorial debut Molly Manning Walker does a staggeringly good job in highlighting these uncomfortable moments not as instances of elation, but rather a nightmare scenario that unfortunately too many girls can relate to. It made me question, as many stories do, why in the world do girls like guys? It also confirms why women like to date older, often seeing as the guys in their age group can be as ridiculously immature as the guys Tara and her friend group interact with. 

Displaying some wonderful British talent while also showing exactly why locals hate when foreigners visit and see their homeland as a place to party and destroy, How to Have Sex feels like a punch in the gut. It’s one of those stories where you just want to apologize to the female gender on behalf of men. Plenty of girls have a story similar to Tara and that ultimately makes this such a sad story to take. In addition, we get a bright new directorial voice flexing her muscles here paired with a strong lead performance, all coming together for something not necessarily enjoyable for obvious reasons but important to experience.