How to Have Sex (Molly Manning Walker, 2023) (Patreon)

ABOVE: a vaguely phallic swimming pool

I must admit, I am not sure there is any version of this film I would have really appreciated. How to Have Sex is a young person's film, and the primary concerns of its protagonists are of very little concern to me. This alone is hardly disqualifying, but perhaps in trying to be highly specific in her approach, Manning Walker seems to adopt her characters' myopia as her own, lending a gravity to their situation -- three under-18 girls go to a European beach resort, get fucked up, stay fucked up, and try to hook up -- that it never quite earns.

That's why the late film conundrum, of main character Tara (Mia KcKenna Bruce) finding herself in a situation that is clearly date rape, feels false. All the tedious stuff that comes before it was just a set-up for what eventually becomes a feature-length PSA. The only thing that keeps How to Have Sex from completely listing into total absurdity is McKenna Bruce's time-release charisma. Tara is the only thing that doesn't feel predetermined. It helps that Manning Walker wisely keeps the camera down at Tara's level, taking a lesson (sadly, only one) from Chantal Akerman. McKenna Bruce is small, with rounded features, and over time goes from nondescript to glowing.  

Even as the atmosphere debauchery seems to dwarf her, the actress maintains control of the film, infusing Tara with a perceptible, moment-to-moment struggle to assess things and make decisions. The rest of the ensemble, sadly, seem to be working overtime to communicate the supposed ordinariness of their characters. Although I fear it might be sexist to call Em (Enva Lewis) and especially Skye (Lara Peake) "basic bitches," How to Have Sex works overtime to render them in two dimensions. Em's character sort of exemplifies the problem with Manning Walker's worldview. She's a Black queer character, dead set on hooking up with Paige (Laura Ambler), the boy characters' butch lesbian friend. But the film pays neither of them any mind. They are literally there to check off a Gen-Z diversity requirement.

To complicate matters, we get no sense of how Paige fits in with her two stereotypical party-lad friends Paddy (Samuel Bottomley) and Badger (Shaun Thomas). Is she "one of the guys," just another pussy hound? Or does she offer a different perspective on this drink-and-fuck party culture, dripping as it is with aggressive heterosexuality. Alas, the film couldn't care less. In fact it seems like Manning Walker means to inflate Tara's poignancy by surrounding her with caricatures. Badger in particular is a sad figure,  the "nice guy" whose open affection towards Tara practically demands that she friend-zone him.

At about the midpoint of the film, Tara gets separated from her mates, and we see Badger and Em get worried. For about ten minutes, How to Have Sex goes into cinematic "crisis mode." Every single shot is framed the same way as all the previous ones -- sitting on the balcony, milling around the filthy hotel room, establishing the larger environment -- but Manning Walker slowly zooms in on every single shot. I've never seen anything like it, which I guess in itself is noteworthy. It's the most obvious technique for ramping up tension, and it is played 100% straight.

As it happens, Tara met up with another group of friends in a club, and a woman named Fi (Eilidh Loan) sees that Tara is wasted and takes her under her wing. This other group is much more jovial and dorky, giving the sense that unlike Tara, Em, and Skye, these folks are adults with a basic sense of who they are. They have nothing to prove, whereas Tara's crowd work hard to approximate a teenager's idea of maturity. The contrast is striking, and maybe that's the point.

But an exact simulacrum of callowness is just callow. And since we never really get a bead on who Paddy is, there are no dramatic stakes when he assaults Tara, twice. While I'm not asking a presumably feminist writer-director to give the rapist more depth, How to Have Sex simply suggests that a chav is a chav. By extension, even at 16 Tara should've seen him coming a mile away. In other words, if we simply accept Manning Walker's film at face value, it's a mundane cautionary tale, Kids for British girls. If we take it more seriously then that, How to Have Sex implicitly blames the victim. Once Em realizes that Tara was raped, she reassures her friend: "we got this." Girl power has never felt so hopeless.