HOW TO HAVE SEX - Mark Reviews Movies

How to Have Sex, Mubi

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Review by Mark Dujsik | February 1, 2024

Three friends travel from the United Kingdom to Greece for a brief—but hopefully eventful—vacation in How to Have Sex. They're all 16 or thereabouts, all awaiting the results of a test that will determine their educational and/or professional futures, and all looking to have a good time in order to forget that pressure. Pressure isn't easy to escape, though, because it's everywhere.

Yes, it's even in a resort town in Greece, as Tara (Mia McKenna-Bruce) learns repeatedly over the course of this simple but discomforting story of how youthful expectations can sour in a moment. She and her friends, Skye (Lara Peake) and Em (Enva Lewis), have come to this place for a few days of drinking, lounging by the pool, dancing at clubs, hanging out together, and meeting new people.

As the title suggests, they're also hoping to have sex with one or some of those new people, and that's especially the case with Tara. She's a virgin, and her pals, particularly Skye, don't ever let her forget that fact.

This debut feature from writer/director Molly Manning Walker is assured in how it follows Tara, her mindset, and the increasing isolation that comes from feeling all alone, even though one is surrounded by familiar faces, new acquaintances, and complete strangers having fun. Tara does just want to have fun, but how can she lose herself in the big party that becomes this vacation when her mind and everyone else is telling her not to worry about everything that is worrying her? The best way to get a person to think of something, of course, is to tell that person not to think of that thing.

Beyond that, there is the plain fact of all this stress. Tara needs to have succeeded at her test if she's to have any chance and hope of going to university, as Skye and Em are almost certain to do. There's nothing she can do about it now but to wait, and no distraction is going to keep those thoughts of possible failure and impending doom from her mind.

She has to have sex with someone on this getaway, because everyone else she knows of at school has and, as Skye puts it early in the vacation, this is her best chance. If it's not on a drunken holiday surrounded by guys who are specifically looking for that kind of good time, it's likely that Tara will remain a virgin for the foreseeable future.

None of this is really true, obviously, but try telling that to a teenager like Tara. In her mind, everything is on the line over these next few days, and Manning Walker makes us feel that anxiety, simply by letting us observe Tara and setting her inner turmoil against the juxtaposition of pool parties, nights out at the club, and hotel-room get-togethers where everyone seems to be having a much better time than she is.

The atmosphere of the film, then, is one of an inherent contradiction. It becomes clear soon after the girls' arrival in Greece, when they're chatting about their plans, cheering and screaming at every promising development (getting a room with a view of the pool, for example), and picking out just the right outfits for a night on the town. Skye and Em are all smiles and laughter and energy, and the first hints of what's to come for Tara are subtle. It's on McKenna-Bruce's face, which looks to be as hopeful and excited as the visages of her friends, but when her mom texts or Skye brings up her virginity yet again, that look drops. We can see it's just a façade.

The story, as one might anticipate, isn't much of one, since it is simply a vacation. The three discover their hotel neighbors on the balcony across the way, because Tara and Badger (Shaun Thomas), one of the group staying in the other room, have an awkward introduction. She notices him but is shy, and he tries to get her attention. Eventually, the three girls will spend a lot of time with Badger, his best pal Paddy (Samuel Bottomley), and their friend Paige (Laura Ambler), who takes up a lot of Em's attention.

It's obvious Tara is attracted to Badger and vice versa, but Skye—who's the one, remember, who really makes the point that Tara should be looking for a guy—quickly shoots him down as a candidate for her friend. The relationship between Tara and Skye is specifically rendered here in bursts such as that—the little "jokes" Skye makes at Tara's expense, the constant assertion that she's just joking, the flashes of petty jealousy on Skye's face, the way their conversations never breach any depth beyond immediate plans and what happened the night before. Manning Walker's screenplay may not develop these characters beyond such details, but it has a firm understanding of who these people are and how they reveal themselves.

That's also true of Badger, who appears to be a slightly clownish party boy but might be wearing a mask like Tara, and Paddy, who's quiet presence in the background is hiding an insidious nature. Parties, nights out, and hang-outs continue, and Tara realizes—too late—who some of these people really are (An uncomfortable scene on a beach and a quietly terrifying one in a bed are the key to that) and, in a sequence that flips expectations when Tara seems to go missing, finds more comfort in a group of strangers than she does with her old and new friends.

How to Have Sex serves as a fine study of the weight of various pressures on young people. Ultimately, it's about the dangers, not of having a good time, but of allowing others to define that concept for you.

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