Molly Manning Walker’s “How to Have Sex” won the Un Certain Regard prize for Best Film at last year’s Cannes Film Festival. It’s now playing in theaters, and with good reviews to boot — 97% on Rotten Tomatoes and 79 on Metacritic.
Walker’s vivid film tackles three British teens who go on a resort holiday filled with sex, drugs and boozing. Seen through the eyes of Tara (Mia McKenna-Bruce), this is a painfully uncomfortable watch as our three protagonists drink, party and engage in promiscuity practically the entire runtime — to the point of total excess … until an incident occurs.
I won’t reveal further, but I loved Walker’s handling of tone and realism while also showing a deft confidence in style. There’s an ambiguity to Tara’s dillema, which she tensely keeps hidden from her friends, and I love how Walker plays with it. For practically the entire film you have to wonder what is going on inside her head.
The film should have ended with a shot near the climax, in a taxi cab, that could have been sheer perfection, but it doesn’t, and the film’s moral ambiguities just evaporate after that. If “How to Have Sex” would have ended on the shot I mentioned then I would have gladly called “How to Have Sex” a great movie, but we’ll instead have to settle with just good. [B/B+]