God, what a terrible thing it is to be a teenage girl. A body once free to roam and run and be transformed by the unforgivable rush of hormones, cunning little tricksters pumped through blood in a mad rush to reach the anti-climatic cusp of adulthood. What a beautiful thing it is to be a teenage girl, too. A mind dazzlingly clouded by the overwhelming realm of possibility, skin covered in a web of electricity, every single sliver of emotion felt so deeply it rattles and shakes like a ping-pong ball of excitement through the brain.
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Molly Manning Walker’s “How To Have Sex” understands this thorny dichotomy in which female adolescence is embedded. The filmmaker’s directorial debut takes three best friends to the tourist-riddled Malia: bubbly blabber Tara (Mia McKenna-Bruce), raunchy troublemaker Skye (Lara Peake), and sweet mum friend Em (Enva Lewis). The trio has put the pens down post-exams and set off to the Greek town with one goal only: to have as much sex as they can — and, most importantly, to help Tara get rid of a V card weighing on her chest as a scarlet letter.
While American cinema has long solidified the sober coming-of-ager disguised as a raucous teen comedy, British cinema has been somewhat shier in its offering, tending to lean into the grittier snapshots of adolescence peppered with a twinge of kitchen sink or going head onto the slapstick of “The Inbetweeners.” With “How To Have Sex,” Walker looks to slide into this lacking space, chronicling the pure juice of Brits abroad from the orange twinge of self-tanner sticking to bright neon-colored cut-out tops to a soundtrack lifted straight out of The Official Chart on BBC Radio 1.
It is through the sound of the catchy beats of Joel Corry’s hit Head and Heart that the girls first make their way into the freezing ocean, the water washing away all scholarly preoccupations. Music greatly feeds into Walker’s commitment to building a film rooted in its time, the joint humming of generic beats acting as one of the strongest bonding tools for young female friendship. Silence, here, comes as the dreaded precursor to a hangover, be it the one that whips grown men to their knees or the quieter and yet much more dangerous emotional ailment.
Hangovers are key to “How To Have Sex,” a film that uses the fogginess of regret and confusion to tap into one of the thorniest aspects of female coming of age. Those entering the film nurturing any hopes of learning a thing or two about knocking boots won’t find much luck. Walker’s title choice is bait for half-baked jokes and perhaps the most asserted decision in a film that offers many, a pointed nod at the unprotected leap into the void that is the first steps of a girl’s sexual journey.
If the first half of “How To Have Sex” is tightly written as a teen comedy, its latter portion veers into the tenser, darker side of sexual inexperience. Tara, introduced as a walking bundle of energy, slowly sinks into the murky waters of discomfort, learning for the first time that the promised land of pleasure is oftentimes the favored harbor of ghouls. Newcomer McKenna-Bruce is extraordinary in the command of this shift, standing as the driving force of a film certain to act as a launchpad for her budding career. It’s hard not to get a twinge of Florence Pugh from the young actress, who shares with the “Midsommar” star not only a raspy voice and petite frame but a natural, confident charm that anchors whatever scene she’s in.
Another highlight in the young cast is Shaun Thomas, who imbues Tara’s goofy love interest Badger with heartwarming earnestness. With poorly realized frosted tips and ever poorer tattoos spread all over his body — including his nickname penned above his belly button and the words ‘hot legend’ on his forearm — Badger is a character we’ve seen plenty of times before, which makes Thomas’ ability to find the excitable in the predictable even more of a feat.
The few stumbles in Walker’s debut are those common to first features: a slightly rushed final act and an insufferably mean frenemy that threatens to dilute the nastiness of the film’s true villain try their best but can’t dampen what is otherwise an assured, fresh contribution to the recent array of promising British debuts. By bringing to the screen a conversation painfully reserved to private spaces built upon the frail structures of shame and guilt without ever losing the type of loving lightness one can only get through unwavering support, Molly Manning-Walker confidently steps out of the gate right foot forward. [B+]
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