How to Have Sex
Written and directed by Molly Manning-Walker
Starring Mia Mckenna-Bruce, Lara Peake Enva Lewis
In cinemas

How to Have Sex starts as a ‘coming of age’ story with three friends traveling to Malia (Greece) after school ends, searching for excessive drinking and sex.

Early on, while Skye, Em and Tara (Taz) are playing dress up and worrying about their future, the focus is their friendship. However, the narrative changes when it is revealed that one of the young women is a virgin. She becomes the movie’s protagonist, and the holiday fun darkens with disturbing experiences.

The cast is the best part of the movie. Tara is played by the amazing Mia Mckenna-Bruce (from ‘Persuasion’, 2022) delivering a great performance as an inexperienced girl trying to understand her feelings and cope with the worst situations.

She is also supported by a very talented ensemble that kept me engaged even when the plot failed.

Set on a Greek beach apparently exclusive for British youth, girls perform sensually without knowing how, why, or what they want, while boys behave as entitled to sex. When sex does not occur, it is because the boy did not want it, or he was opening space for another boy to exercise his entitlement.

No character in the movie talks about pleasure, desire, or attraction. They also do not talk about birth control or wearing protection. There is not one happy couple enjoying sexual discovery in the entire movie.

When one half of a lesbian couple in the story mentions not having had sex yet, the reason is ‘fear’. The movie is telling us that girls (and boys) today know as little about sex as they did 30 or 40 years ago.

A fast Google search reveals the debuting director and writer Molly Manning-Walker, a young woman herself, is involved in discussions about sexual education and consent in the UK, but none of it appears in the movie. I wanted to like How to Have Sex, but there are just too many missed opportunities to communicate something beyond despair.

The movie seems determined to portray the girls as extremely naïve, particularly Tara. The camera angles do not let the viewer forget that she is smaller and physically more fragile than the others (even if supposedly all the girls are under 18).

Just in case you missed the point, she wears a necklace written ‘Angel’.

Tara has no plans for her future and is easily manipulated by friends. Hers is a character needing to be protected and is devastated when she is not. The director’s excessive messaging of purity is not needed.

However, the director has mercifully avoided nudity. The actors’ bodies are respected by the camera while effectively conveying the sexualised environment the characters are immersed in.

Ultimately, the story works as a cautionary tale on hook-up culture, drinking and underage sex, and this is a shame. This movie is not the place to learn How to Have Sex.

But that place is so important in cinema, given the industry’s dichotomy of cautionary tales or porn.

Artists, like revolutionaries, have the task to show the world new possibilities of being. That includes stories of young virgins who know their bodies and desires, choosing to engage in sex for consensual mutual pleasure with good communication and clear boundaries. Moreover, all that experimentation with partners who are not just little predators but complex human beings held accountable in society if they attempt to behave as if entitled to girls’ bodies.

I will be the first in the queue when that movie is released.

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Movie Trailer: