You can just see the nasty hangovers coming in the opening minutes of How to Have Sex (now on Netflix), the assured and immersive debut feature from writer/director Molly Manning Walker. Booze, boys and bathing suits take center stage in this hedonistic saga about three 16-year-old British girls on an unsupervised vacay at a Greek resort full of young, horny revelers. Led by a revelatory Mia McKenna-Bruce (Vampire Academy), the film scored a trio of BAFTA nominations and won the Un Certain Regard award at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival, on the strength of Walker’s direction and the unvarnished manner in which she depicts the psychology of sex at a tender age.
The Gist: I’m not going to argue whether our three protagonists are best described as “girls” or “women.” They’re very much in the in-between stage. But even though it’s never made explicit, there’s the sense that they might be a few years younger than most of the people at this warm, sunny ground-zero locale for revelry, and that uneasy feeling never goes away. In fact, it only grows as the film progresses. Tara (McKenna-Bruce), Em (Enva Lewis) and Skye (Lara Peake) get off the plane from the U.K., hooting and howling – no exaggeration, there; they’re LOUD – and ready to pull on their minis and bikinis, guzzle punchbowls of sickly-sweet neon-colored booze, get laid and leave behind the stress of their GCSE tests (roughly a U.K. equivalent of American SATs). Compared to the other two, Tara is relatively green in the realm of hard-partying; her primary goal is to lose her virginity as Em and Skye cheer her on.
Don’t expect John Hughes or Judd Apatowisms in this film, though. These characters are grounded and function wholly within the rhythms of recognizable reality – no caricatures or stereotypes here. On the first night, Tara, Em and Skye drink and drink and drink and drink and yowl tuneless karaoke and puke and drink more shots – in that order – and end up stumbling back to the hotel in a stupor. They failed: No sex was had. But the next day, Tara parks on the patio to doll up at the makeup mirror and notices the occupants of the neighboring suite, bleach-blond Badger (Shaun Thomas), his eternally shirtless friend Paddy (Samuel Bottmley) and Paige (Laura Ambler), who I believe is gay like Em is gay, although I’m hesitant to make any definitive statements about such things, especially in these what-happens-in-Crete-stays-in-Crete freeform just-go-with-it situations.
Not much “happens” in a traditional movie sense as these six individuals find and/or manufacture any feasible excuse to guzzle more and more booze from plastic cups and swim and dance, and watch and/or participate in organized activities in which resort hosts bring volunteers up on stage to perform various raunchy deeds. Tara deems Badger and Paddy her best options for taking her virginity, and seems to prefer the former, although mutual interest is tough to determine in any situation, especially when everyone’s loaded like a nuclear shotgun. Fissures in the Tara-Em-Skye unit – their tightness is in question, and it’s clear all parties lack emotional maturity, and maturity in general – and general anarchy result in an evening where Tara splinters from the group, and it takes Em and Skye pushing away hangover hazes and piecing together events amidst blacked-out memories to realize their friend never came back to the room.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: How to Have Sex takes Spring Breakers’ out-of-control bacchanal and delivers it with gritty, wide-eyed realism and a sense of introspection that brought to mind the tone and style of Bo Burnham’s Eighth Grade.
Performance Worth Watching: McKenna-Bruce gives an extraordinary nonverbal performance here, communicating a variety of complex and difficult-to-define emotions with very little meaningful dialogue.
Memorable Dialogue: “Jokes” is a slang term here – “Last night was very jokes” is Em’s assessment of a particularly wild evening, although sober third-party observers might not find it particularly funny.
Sex and Skin: There’s no graphic nudity here, but the few sex scenes are explicit, and one is a disturbing depiction of sexual assault.
Our Take: Not a spoiler: How to Have Sex isn’t at all the kind of movie where Tara is never seen again, or ends up coming home in a box. She returns eventually, strolling through a deserted morning-after revelry zone (imagine a stretch of Bourbon Street at sunrise during a janitorial strike) that looks like the reverse-rapture occurred, leaving an apocalyptic mess of trash and bodily fluids. It’s a memorable shot that could’ve been lifted from a most gruesome zombie flick.
The film flashes back to the events of Tara’s evening, which doesn’t play out with the grueling melodramatic intensity we’d see in movies that feel like, you know, movies. There’s no revelatory shock here. Instead, there’s a dull, pragmatic sense of disappointment and growing disillusionment that envelops Tara, and quietly obliterates her ability to feel joy. Not much is openly communicated, but so very much is said about innocence lost amidst unfettered youthful vigor, and the idea of consent, specifically how it’s given, the tone and the context.
That’s not the entire thematic text of the film, but it’s the pivot point of the narrative, where the unapologetic stupidity of the characters’ behavior shifts from embarrassing and thoroughly obnoxious to something far less amusing – and tempted as I am to say everything’s funny until someone gets hurt, there’s much more to the movie than Tara’s traumatic coming-of-age. How Tara deals with the aftermath of her experience ranges from feigned ambivalence to attempts to throw herself back into the revelry and get lost in the chaos of substances and music and massive crowds of partiers, and Walker’s camera zooms in closer and closer on McKenna-Bruce’s face more and more often, as if waiting for her to crack open. The actress is very much up for not giving it all away to the audience, in a movie where her character gave away too much already. It’s a sad scene.
Our Call: How to Have Sex is a coming-of-age movie without all the cliches of the subgenre, and its insights are stronger for it. STREAM IT.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.