Review: ‘How to Have Sex’ is a vivid, heartbreaking debut feature with a stunning performance by Mia McKenna-Bruce.
. It’s a longform hang of a dating competition show, sun-baked and silly. The regional accents are thick and varied, the wardrobe a dizzying array of club wear dotted with peekaboo cutouts, crisscrossed by lacing. In the evenings, everyone dresses for a big night out, but they stay stuck out on the same old terrace where they’ve just spent all afternoon lounging like house cats. Things never get wild, as production limits each cast member to two drinks per night.
At the beginning of the trip, we are shown the expected messy, fumbling bacchanal: shots and karaoke, puke and sidewalk pop-a-squats. Manning Walker films these rambling scenes with freewheeling energy, warm and amiable but also maybe a little bit horrified. These kids are going hard, and it’s alarming to watch as a concerned adult stranger in the audience. I don’t think the film is shaming the girls, nor is it giving their elders stern warnings about what the youth of today is up to.
McKenna-Bruce precisely calibrates Tara’s descent into trauma, both her private pain and her attempts at outward, nothing’s-wrong sunniness. What’s happened to Tara is an all too common occurrence in the real world, but Manning Walker is careful not to flatten the movie into a broad issues drama. She keeps things granular, focused on Tara trying to get through her remaining days of vacation amidst a dawning, horrible new understanding of the world.
Manning Walker is a sensitive steward of Tara’s story, knowing just when to pull back and when to get close.is a more than promising debut feature, though it does make a few freshman stumbles toward the end. The film is miles away from the leering, synthetic depravity of, and no scolding is cast Tara’s way—nor toward real girls who may be gearing up for their own first trips with friends.
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