'How to Have Sex' is more sad than shocking - review

When accusations of gang rapes from party destinations in Cyprus hit the news, many of us learned about this culture of young people from around the world vacationing in cheap resorts on the Mediterranean and indulging in heavy drinking and drug use. 

If you’ve ever had a hangover, it didn’t sound like much fun, but for many in their late teens and early 20s, taking part in this hard-partying scene, which appears to focus on getting almost drunk enough to pass out and having quick hookups, is a rite of passage.

When I read about the Cyprus scene – there were similar spring-break party trips to Florida and other sunbelt spots when I was growing up in the US, but my friends and I were too nerdy to take part – I understood why the boys flocked to these destinations, eager to make conquests. But I wondered what drew the girls there, and this question seemed especially puzzling in light of the growing awareness of date rape and the #MeToo movement. 

Now Molly Manning Walker’s feature-film debut, How to Have Sex, which opens in theaters around Israel on January 18, has come along to show us this scene from the girls’ point of view. The movie, which was the winner of the Un Certain Regard Award at Cannes, one of the festival’s most prestigious prizes, isn’t lurid in any way, as its title might suggest. 

Instead, it tells a story that is much more sad than shocking, of three female friends from a working-class British town who go on their dream vacation together while waiting to get the results of their high-school final exams. These results will determine whether they go on to university and, in a certain sense, their entire futures. But on this trip, they are still bathed in the final rays of that high-school light that illuminates those who are pretty and self-assured, but which will fade the second they leave school. 

Desperate to have a good time

Tara (Mia McKenna-Bruce) knows that her exam results will not be good and she is especially desperate to have a good time at this resort, which happens to be in Crete. That will include, she is sure, losing her virginity, which she hopes will stop her friend Skye (Lara Peake), whose merciless ribbing qualifies her as something of a frenemy, from teasing her. 

If only Tara, who can be both dim and clever in the same scene, had seen Clueless at the right age, she might have absorbed the wisdom of Cher (Alicia Silverstone), the confident virgin who is the heroine of that ’90s classic, about waiting for the right guy: “You see how picky I am about my shoes, and they only go on my feet.” But, pushed by the more experienced Skye, Tara is eager to have sex as soon as possible and acts as if it’s a now-or-never situation. 

Skye comes from a working-class family like Tara’s, and has similar prospects, but she may actually pass her exams, and, in addition to making fun of Tara’s sexual inexperience, she ribs Tara about the dead-end job she will get when they return home. While Em (Enva Lewis) loves her girlfriends, she is the brainiest of the three and is undoubtedly headed for university and a professional career.

This is her last hurrah before her life changes, while Skye and Tara may remain in the cycle of lousy jobs and drunken partying for the foreseeable future, if not for the rest of their lives. That Em is Black and seems to come from a stronger, more intact family, may be a subtle way of exploring Britain’s current class system. Em is also a lesbian, but that seems to be a convenient way of setting her up with another similarly inclined girl who is traveling with the guys staying in the next room.

These guys, and Skye and Tara’s fluctuating attraction to them, are at the heart of the film. Badger (Shaun Thomas) is the sweet, goofy guy with hair bleached blonde at the tips who Tara would begin a romance with if romance were even a concept in this world. But after she watches him go along with a particularly repellent stunt in front of a crowd, she can’t take him seriously anymore and finds herself drawn to his friend, Paddy (Samuel Bottomley).  Paddy is obviously what would be called a player, and she heads with him to the chilly beach at night for the supposedly fun hookup that is the goal of the holiday. 

A cold-eyed look at a toxic culture

Many critics wrote that this movie deals with issues of consent, but it is not a film about rape, rather a cold-eyed look at a culture that venerates massive alcohol consumption and the alcohol-fueled sex it makes possible. The problem isn’t that Tara doesn’t consent, but more that she doesn’t seem to understand that she has the option to refuse. 

There is no indication that she feels even a flicker of sexual pleasure, but she feels pressure not to say no, not so much by the young man as by the whole situation. She has bought into the idea that a drunken hookup means freedom and fun, and to refuse to take part would be to commit social suicide. To show that she is hurt when Paddy ignores her later would also invite ridicule.

McKenna-Bruce is so credible as Tara that the movie sometimes has the feel of a documentary. The other actors are equally natural in their roles, especially Thomas. Walker has written a screenplay that feels like a movie-long improvisation but is actually carefully constructed, a very difficult achievement for a first-time director. 

The sadness at the core of this movie goes deep, as it focuses on a world where any human connection and sensuality connected to sex has been washed away by rivers of alcohol. 

Walker masterfully creates a kind of hellish underworld in hot, crowded clubs and poolside parties, where you can virtually smell the sweat and the booze. When Tara walks home alone down the main thoroughfare one morning, it looks like some post-apocalyptic hellscape, empty of people and filled with garbage, but the real horror doesn’t come from a zombie invasion – as it would in most movies that feature these kinds of images – but her loneliness. 

She’s too young to have turned bitter, but her eyes show how wounded she feels. She can brighten up, joking with girlfriends, but you sense that the sorrow of that moment will never quite leave her. It’s not easy to accompany her on this journey, but Walker does manage to make us care for this confused heroine.