How to Have Sex

Grade: B-

How to Have Sex is a blunt title for a movie. It sounds like it might be the name of a different kind of movie (one I wouldn’t write about, or see), but by the end, the meaning will become clear. It’s about young people – one in particular – who are so desperate to give it away for the first time. It could be called How to Smartly Have Sex. It’s about knowing whether the time and circumstances are right, and the psychological repercussions if they aren’t.

The characters’ thick London accents will keep you on your toes. Many sentences end with “innit,” which seems to be an informal conversational suffix meaning “y’know?” Molly Manning Walker makes her feature debut as a writer/director. She served as cinematographer for Scrapper, a movie from last year that I greatly admired. This makes sense, as How to Have Sex has the same look.

As an actor, I’ve found that one of the most difficult things to do on stage is act tired. Directors keep telling me I sound drunk. Playing a drunk character is one of the easiest tasks. Just act tired. The three main actresses convincingly play impaired throughout most of the film. They are Mia McKenna-Bruce, Lara Peake, and Enva Lewis as, respectively, 16-year-old lifelong best friends Tara, Skye, and Em. They are off to a resort by the beach on Crete for a few days and nights in the summer before college. They befriend some guests – balcony neighbors, if you will. A few women and men, close to their age, with various degrees of gentlemanliness. Tara is the only virgin (as of the beginning of the vacation).

The movie’s first half has a lot of nothing happening, except a copious amount of drinking, smoking, swimming, partying, and montages of dancing at strobe-lighted clubs. Fortunately, and finally, the plot kicks into gear when Tara gets separated from the pack and goes missing for a little while. I thought maybe the rest of the film would be a search party thriller, but she comes back, and we are shown the rest of her evening. But after all that same-old same-old, it was nice to have some conflict – and it’s funny how the technical elements that annoyed me suddenly started being compelling and serving the story, once we at last got a narrative.

The actors have commitment, the direction from this first-timer shows promise, but ultimately, How to Have Sex doesn’t go as far as it could, particularly when dealing with the ending. The resolution and unpacking of the trauma from Tara’s encounter with one of the boys happens too easily. Also, a subplot about Tara’s grades potentially not being good enough to go to the same school as her friends is brought up once and never revisited. That could have been another factor in Tara’s sadness near the end, but isn’t really used in the story. Nevertheless, there’s something here, as sloppy as it can be at times. No means no, and yes sometimes isn’t that strong of a yes – innit?

Grade: B-