How To Have Sex review: A spellbinding tale of sex and consent

How To Have Sex made a big splash last May at the Cannes Film Festival, winning the Un Certain Regard prize at the prestigious event. Since then the film has been making the rounds on the festival circuit—including just this month at Sundance—and had a successful release in its home country, the United Kingdom. It was also nominated and won some year-end awards from critics and industry across the pond. Now How To Have Sex finally it makes its debut in the U.S., and audiences here can get to know why this film has been much celebrated so far.

The feature debut of writer and director Molly Manning Walker, How To Have Sex follows in the tradition of many a teenage sex comedy. From John Hughes’ work in the 1980s up to recent comedies like Booksmart and Bottoms. The difference is that How To Have Sex is gritty, realistic and deals with serious themes of sex and consent. The premise sounds familiar: Three British friends spend a summer vacation in Greece during the last year of high school. Skye (Lara Peake) and Em (Enva Lewis) are slightly more experienced than Tara (Mia McKenna-Bruce), who hopes to lose her virginity on this trip. Before long Tara meets two prospects staying at the same hotel. Badger (Shaun Thomas), a sensitive teenager, is always up for a joke or a prank. Paddy (Samuel Bottonley) is broodier, sexier and perhaps slightly more dangerous, making him rather appealing.

Manning Walker is attuned to the ways teenage friends behave around each other. The sweet way they take care of each other and demonstrate their love for each other. The petty grievances and inexplicable animosities that sometimes drive how they react to each other. The camaraderie and the oneupmanship. The abandon they feel when no adults are present. The exaltation that comes with alcohol. All of it feels true in How To Have Sex. But more than that the film knows how to explore budding desire and confusion about sex.

Tara wants to lose her virginity, but she’s awkward about how to announce her physical needs. Her friends try to help, but they’re not much more experienced than she is. The boys she meets are just as clueless and clumsy as Tara. It’s hard to talk about sex when you do not yet have the vocabulary. Manning Walker straddles that fine line when consent becomes dissent and desire becomes repulsion. Her camera sensitively probes the actors’ faces and their surroundings to tell the story the characters cannot verbalize.

Reminiscent of a young Kate Winslet, with the same warm screen presence and emotional fearlessness, McKenna-Bruce anchors the film with a superb performance. She’s at once completely present for the camera to capture every flickering emotion on her face, and also withholding as Tara tries to make sense of some bewildering situations. Bottomley and Thomas play off each other well, giving Tara, and the audience, much to consider as to which one of them better suits her. The performances telegraph well why both can be appealing and not. Peake is a spiky counterpoint to McKenna-Bruce, their interactions always teetering on the edge of hostility. She plays jealousy and encouragement simultaneously and in equal measure. Lewis brings such earnest enthusiasm to her role as Tara’s biggest supporter that she single handedly makes the movie’s heartbreaking ending more palatable.

Manning Walker proves herself a natural filmmaker, trusting that she doesn’t need to explain everything. As a storyteller she’s comfortable in the gray areas. As a director she’s able to coax wonderful performances and give them enough space to feel lived in. How To Have Sex presents complicated situations while delicately dealing with a taboo subject. Yet it never panders or offers easy answers. Manning Walker keeps the focus on Tara’s point of view, so the audience feels what she’s feeling at all times. And most of the time Tara is not sure, and that’s what makes her story fascinating and this film enthralling.

How To Have Sex opens in theaters February 2