The provocative title of Molly Manning Walker’s directorial debut, How To Have Sex, might make you think of an exploitation comedy released in the early 2000’s, where the sex lives of high schoolers was fair game for movie studios, and lots of money was made off the nudity of characters that were nominally children. Manning Walker’s film is the ultimate rebuff of those movies; a cautionary tale about allowing the media and peer pressure to trick you into thinking you’re ready for something that you’re not. In the film’s opening scenes, you might sit in desperate fear that this is will turn out to be a grim drama about unexpected sexual violence. This is not not that, but Manning Walker engages the audience by taking you to the expected place in unexpected ways.

Mia McKenna-Bruce plays Tara, an English teenager in between grade school and the rest of her life. She doesn’t have high hopes that her test scores will get her into a university, so her prospects feel slim. To top it all off, she’s still a virgin, the only one left amongst her friends. All of this will be solved in a Summer trip to Malia, a beachside town in Crete that houses a party resort for equally young and equally aimless British youth. She’s making the trip with her two friends, Em (Enva Lewis) and Skye (Lara Peake). Her friends are not only more sexually experienced but also both have more fruitful education options. Em, in fact, is already planning on attending college in the fall. The girls are bound by love but also beginning to splinter because of petty jealousies, years-old resentments, and the simple realities of growing up.

The trip, signed off by their parents, is a rights-of-passage journey into the world of partying and alcohol, crowded clubs with loud music and bisexual lighting. As they walk into their resort suite, they openly discuss who will get laid the most, and more importantly, prioritize Tara popping her cherry. A genuine prospect appears in the form of Badger (Shaun Thomas), a scruffy young lad who makes his interest in Tara readily apparent. Badger’s friend, Paddy (Samuel Bottomley), is more traditionally handsome. Skye makes her opinion known: Badger is too unbecoming for Tara’s first time, and Paddy is the one she should go for. Tara feels an incredible pressure not only to lose her virginity but also to play the role of the friendly, permissive girl that the situation demands. When she begins to realize she doesn’t actually enjoy it, it’s already too late.

Mia McKenna-Bruce, an actor whose known mostly for her television work as a child actor gets a sizable adult role here – though a more precise description might be “coming of age”. Her performance, perfectly directed by Manning Walker, strays away from large emotional displays, in favor of a more accurate shattered numbness. When one has seen enough of these gritty UK dramas, you come to expect the worst, but How To Have Sex mostly sidesteps what you might predict for something far more delicate, which in turn is far more heartbreaking. McKenna-Bruce’s arc from unfiltered party girl to catatonic apathy is a tough one to pull off – especially in the movie’s ninety-one minutes – but this is actually an excellent performance. The film doesn’t wallow in its trauma, but instead draws out the troubling repercussions of it.

This is ultimately a very effective drama even if it isn’t the deepest. In its attempt to avoid the most devastating conclusion, it instead settles for an ending that feels pretty pat in its execution. Manning Walker is making a film about the dangers that meet young women in plain sight, and while this has become a popular sub-genre of indie film in the last few years (2020’s Never Rarely Sometimes Always and last year’s The Royel Hotel strike me as the most high profile), it doesn’t make its observations any less relevant. It’s a movie about someone who wants to take the shortcut to maturity but feels sold a bill of goods when they get there. It’s also a pitch perfect depiction of the fragility of friendships in that purgatory between grade school and college. This is the irony of the film’s suggestive title: sex is an education, in many more ways than you’d think.

 

Written and Directed by Molly Manning Walker