'How to Have Sex' is not what you think it is
MUBI
The nights are infinite. The years are guaranteed. We’re going out and going out and going out and we’re going to be best friends forever just like this no matter what.
The remarkable, optimistic, faulty haze of youth and the circumstances that tilt individuals and relationships crack quietly and devastatingly in “How to Have Sex,” whose title not only ensures responsible folks won’t search for showtimes at work but also that a decent percentage of those who find it will wonder when the manual starts. Rather, those filing false advertising suits against “How to Have Sex” may be one of the prime targets of a cautionary tale that plays a bit like the other, British side of the “Spring Breakers” coin.
Leaving London for a summertime blowout akin to Daytona Beach but with much better accents, Tara (Mia McKenna-Bruce), Em (Enva Lewis), and Skye (Lara Peake) have a pretty small to-do agenda for their holiday: Get drunk. Get laid. End of list. This is about the time you’re wondering if writer-director Molly Manning Walker is pursuing a modern after-school special about the ills of alcohol (gasp!), premarital sex (oh my stars!), and unsupervised carousing (faints). The answer is no, but “How to Have Sex” certainly intends to be a reality check and a type of prescription to recognize the unseen. (It’s worth noting that Tara is a virgin.) Such as: Friendships can be fragile, attraction can be confusing, consent is a must.
While the trio of girls meshes with the partying crowds and more closely with a group staying in the next balcony over (including Shaun Thomas as Badger and Samuel Bottomley as Paddy), excitement and broadness turns into actual, complicated exchanges between people that exist. This is a movie about learning things as you go, some awful, some exhilarating — oh, those bros aren’t really bros after all, and trusting one doesn’t mean trusting both. Hey, these strangers make you feel safe. Oh, your supposed ride-or-die doesn’t actually listen or care or have your back. Hey, a friend is showing up for me exactly how I’d want them to.
I’m not sure Walker unravels elements of safety or violation or identity or cruelty in such novel ways to take the film from good to essential. Harmony Korine’s aforementioned 2013 classic remains stunning, complex, and newly thought-provoking more than a decade later. “How to Have Sex” hinges on some of the same naivete while also recognizing that sobering transition from not knowing to knowing, or from not knowing to just not understanding.
Regardless, this is jolting and simultaneously entertaining and crushing stuff, very well-acted and naturally directed. As the liquor flows and physical goals need a person to embody them, dynamics are driven by who’s involved, whether there’s something there for now or for later too. Trust can be unpredictable, and friendships that may seem unbreakable can sour at only the slightest chance to be left out in the sun. This is an effective movie about the intertwining of closeness and discomfort.
B+
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