How to Have Sex is ironically titled, to say the last, as writer-director Molly Manning Walker’s feature debut functions more like a “how-not-to manual,” so nightmarish is its depiction of one 16-year-old girl’s holiday trip to a party city on a Greek island with two other friends. Tara (Mia McKenna-Bruce) is the least sexually experienced of the three, yet she’s eager and uninhibited, down for the binge drinking and bed swapping. Or so she thinks. Manning Walker clues us in early on that this may not be the pleasure paradise she expects. After scenes of Tara squealing alongside her friends (Lara Peake and Enva Lewis) while jumping up and down on their beds—“We’re in Malia baby!!!”—there is a hard cut to Tara shivering on the beach, softly observing, “It’s kind of cold.” Later, Tara will be numb. (The sound design throughout is exceedingly sophisticated, especially during a scene in which Tara wills herself to dance but the music drops away, so that the only thing we hear is her labored breathing.) Thanks in part to McKenna-Bruce’s performance, How to Have Sex never feels exploitative. She gives Tara a sharp emotional intelligence; if Tara is naive, it’s willfully so, as societal pressure complicates her personal desires. (For a hedonistic utopia, Malia has an awful lot of rules; don’t obey the constant commands to party and you’re a pariah.) Those expecting to see something titillating in a movie called How to Have Sex will be surprised by what Manning Walker offers. This is more like Scared Straight! for spring break.
(2/15/2024)
