The hectic holiday makers have little time for reflection or relaxation. It’s full-on screaming, smoking and boozing. Drink shots, vomit, more drink, puke, the cycle is unending. When the teenagers’ energy levels eventually wilt, a quick nap and they’re ready to head out for another day of boozy shenanigans. It’s like Skins on vacation, but with a lot more naivety, fewer jokes and even more troubled drama. (Though I was the only person at my screening to laugh out loud at Tara’s gag about the pigs hiding in trees.)
Mia McKenna-Bruce’s Tara wears an ‘angel’ necklace with more than a whiff of irony. It’s a constant visual reminder that external appearances don’t tell the whole story and there’s more to Tara than the cinema audience and the other holidaymakers realise. Tara’s friends (played by Lara Peake and Enva Lewis) will want her hot take if she hooks up with a boy, but don’t really have her back when it matters.
The fellas in the next-door apartment are like wolves. They demand attention, shouting and whistling over from one balcony to another. Badger (Shaun Thomas) is extrovert, up for anything, in your face, and unashamed. But it’s the quieter Paddy (Samuel Bottomley) who is the real predator, the kind of guy who has a bedpost that could collapse at any moment due to the notches he’ll have carved in it to record his ghosted ‘conquests’.
Molly Manning Walker’s feature debut How To Have Sex is assured and deeply raw. She holds no punches in exposing the complexity of teenage emotions, desires and anxieties. Despite the film’s title – and Skye and Em impelling Tara to have sex for the first time – Walker doesn’t need to expose bits and bobs to tell her story. What she does reveal is even more sensitive. While Tara is sweet on Badger, it’s Paddy who presents an opportunity and a quiet venue. What follows is a case study in how coercion and alcohol affect informed consent.
How To Have Sex starts out with the girls going on holiday to find freedom. But they quickly discover that other people seem to be the ones free to criticise their looks and take advantage of their vulnerability. Despite the swimware, the unspoken demons of body image insecurities are visible. The holiday is stuffed full of moments when characters feel lonely in a crowd. They don’t want to stand out but are uncomfortable just fitting in. Their freedom includes not noticing when a girl doesn’t come back the apartment one evening, left behind on their night out. Petty rivalries emerge even amongst friends. It’s turning into a holiday where they’re free to experience hurt and disappointment, and worse.
As Tara wanders alone and begins to process what’s happened, a stranger – a Scottish girl staying in a villa – intervenes and looks out for her. It’s a moment of hope and compassion, but also a potentially worrying development in case she too takes advantage of Tara’s situation. Can anyone be trusted in a resort? Faith in humanity is stretched thin by this tale.
Walker’s film is fictional but very familiar. It is slow to glamorise. While being made to watch How To Have Sex might make parents of teenagers lock away their passports or forget to renew them, screening it to 17 and 18 year – it has a 15 certificate – might jolt them into realising that the dangers their parents and teachers speak of are real. And it might put them on their guard for any preying Paddys out there.
How To Have Sex was screened at Belfast Film Festival and is on release at Queen’s Film Theatre until Thursday 9 November.
Check out my other recommendations at Belfast Film Festival which continues until Saturday 11 November.
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