Trigger warning: This article contains details and discussion about sexual assault and rape.
Teguan Harris
Molly Manning Walker’s How to Have Sex, starring Mia Mckenna-Bruce, is now in cinemas across the UK.
How to Have Sex has now been released in cinemas after winning the Un Certain Regard award at the Cannes Movie Festival in May. Molly Manning Walker wrote and directed the award-winning feature movie, which viewers assume is about sex. However, Walker takes the subject in an important direction with a frank and honest portrayal of consent.
The movie stars Mia Mckenna-Bruce (Persuasion), along with Lara Peake (Mood) and newcomer Enva Lewis. The actresses play best friends who celebrate their GCSEs on a girls’ holiday in Greece, determined to have the best holiday ever. Samuel Bottomley (Ackley Bridge), Shaun Thomas (Emmerdale), and Laura Ambler star alongside McKenna-Bruce, Peake, and Lewis in the movie.
Tara (Mckenna-Bruce) and her best friends Skye (Peake) and Em (Lewis) meet Paddy (Bottomley), Badger (Thomas), and Paige (Ambler), another group of friends on holiday in Malia, Crete.
As Skye and Em have already lost their virginity, Tara is the last member of the trio to have a sexual experience. Tara faces pressure from Skye to lose her virginity.
Peer pressure leads Tara into an uncomfortable situation with Paddy, whom she has her first sexual experience with. However, this is non-consensual and tainted with disrespect.
got to rewatch How to Have Sex tonight and I really can’t stress out enough how important it is that this film travels far. It makes me think of all the women in my life and how much love and fascination i have for them and their strength. I love crying at the movies pic.twitter.com/oVHggBQaNE
— gabe (@poetsonfilm) November 10, 2023
Consent
In How to Have Sex, Tara experiences sexual assault. On the beach in Malia at an event, she is uncomfortable as Paddy ignores her. When sleeping off the previous night, Paddy joins her in the bedroom. As Tara ignores Paddy, he proceeds to assault her again before he is interrupted.
Consent is never implicit; an unclear yes is a clear no. Tara has been very clear and made her boundaries explicit towards Paddy with her silence and body language. She also said “no” many times before she caved in. These are very explicit signs that she did not consent.
Mckenna-Bruce’s performance is a beautiful and brutal portrayal of a young woman facing the peer pressure of sex. Tara has little to no understanding of her rights to bodily autonomy and is unable to communicate her needs and wants. As for Paddy, Bottomley portrays a “lad” who is entitled to what he wants. This shows that rape is about power. Not sex.
Badger, a friend of Paddy, befriended Tara during the movie. He becomes more aware of what Paddy is doing to Tara, however, he does not hold his friend to account. Badger’s complicity normalises Paddy’s behaviour and pushes his offences to the side. Badger simply allows Paddy to carry on because of their friendship.
Badger’s reaction to Tara’s assault by his best friend also hints that he has sexually assaulted other girls before. This highlights the continuing cycle of complicity and how it enables assaulters to assault again and again.
https://twitter.com/hornbloodfire/status/1721187384102985847
Social Pressure
In the movie Skye (Peake) puts pressure on Tara to lose her virginity. During a game of ‘Never Have I Ever’, she says: “If you don’t get laid this holiday, you never will.”
This pressure stripped Tara of her right to consent and choose. When she tells her friends about her sexual experience with Paddy, she labels the experience as consensual. Tara reimagines what happened at the beach to remove the pressure, silencing her even more.
“Peer pressure clouded her non-consensual encounters”
This is an exquisite portrayal of the toxic competitiveness between young girls to have their first sexual experiences. By putting herself under pressure, Tara’s sexual experiences are already ruined. Peer pressure clouded her non-consensual encounters, leading her into uncomfortable and dangerous situations with Paddy.
Sex has different meanings for different characters throughout the movie. Tara perceives sex as a pressure point. Sex for Paddy is about his pleasure and power. Skye sees sex as a mandatory right of passage as well as a competition.
How To Have Sex was a fantastic movie about clubbing, pressure of all kinds, and friendship. Hilarious in parts and deeply uncomfortable in others, it had the audience gripped. Definitely one to watch.
— Lindz McLeod (debut novel BEAST out now!) (@lindzmcleod) October 24, 2023
“We need to tell this story”
In an interview with Empire, Walker states that the inspiration to make How to Have Sex came from a conversation at a wedding with old friends about wild parties they attended as teens.
Walker opened up about her desire to make the film at the wedding, where her old friends contributed their own stories with a focus on awful sexual experiences. Her old friends also discussed the lack of understanding of consent among young people.
“I went home, and it came out at such a speed that I was like, this is the right thing to do,” Walker tells Empire. “It felt like we had this army saying, ‘We need to tell this story.’ Because if you’ve not been to one of these places [abroad], you’ve had an experience in your hometown or a different version of this event.”
“We really tried to engage with real life and what was going on”
In an interview with the BBC, Walker says that the idea for the movie came from a “formative memory” of witnessing a man receiving oral sex on stage during a bar crawl as a teenager. She conducts her research in Malia where the film takes place.
“We really tried to engage with real life and what was going on,” Walker says. “And then we did some workshops where we talked to 16-year-olds and their concept of consent, and it was quite wild what came out of that.”
How To Have Sex was so well done. How they used the “party holiday strip” as not just a place of unity and community, but a space of disarray, turmoil and isolation was spot on. Costume and casting was great too. Enjoyed how true to life the direction was also. Real solid movie
— Nicolas-Tyrell Scott (@iamntyrell) November 4, 2023
“For me, every woman I know has been sexually assaulted”
When reading through a scene where Tara is sexually assaulted, Walker said that participants in the workshop stated: “I don’t see any issues in this scene.” One girl spoke up, stating to the group: “Girls have to wear better clothes. They have to protect themselves and not get drunk. They have to look after their friends.”
“For me, every woman I know has been sexually assaulted, and not every man I know would claim to have had that experience or to have been a perpetrator,” Walker says to the BBC. “So, I think there’s a real gap there in what people understand as assault. And I think that’s where we have to open the conversation up to allow men and women to discuss what’s going on.”
A Lesson on Consent
Women often champion important and insightful discussions on sexual assault because, as victims of sexual violence, women are forced to hold these conversations. Men have more freedom when reacting to and participating in these discussions. However, we should force men to listen and hold each other responsible.
How to Have Sex is a lesson on consent with three components: first, consent is never implicit. Second: Peer pressure puts people with little experience in dangerous situations. And third: People who are complicit in abuse give abusers the power to do it again.
https://twitter.com/highimpactsex/status/1723297571995816307?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
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Featured image courtesy of Sam Mar on Unsplash. No changes were made to this image. Image licence found here.
Teguan Harris
Writer and journalist. University graduate in English Literature. Book reader, word lover and Notion enthusiast.