Hear ye, hear ye! Discourse approaches in the court of The Mad King Elon. Bow down all ye Twitter-lurking peasants who wish to partake in a toxic cycle of viral controversy and crypto-sponsored ramblings and…
Ahem. Okay, sorry, let’s get to the point.
There is an ongoing discussion across social media about the depiction of sexual content on-screen. Stretching right back to the early days of HBO’s Game of Thrones, people have argued online about the necessity of sexual material in film and television. Of course, this conversation is nothing new but the internet does seem to have changed the goalposts for each side of the debate. Previously, it was mostly just puritanical middle-aged zealots who protested against gratuitous and implied sexual activity in art / entertainment. In turn, it was the bohemian youth who argued for it, created it, and justified it. Mavericks like Agnes Varda and Andy Warhol used independent cinema to push the boundaries of public taste and exhibition. Now however, a new generation has emerged. And many of them find sexual content not just offensive and immoral but superfluous too. They find it embarrassing to watch explicit material alongside both their peers and their elders. Their basic argument goes something like this: if it is not necessary to move the plot forward, then why include it at all?
Naturally, there is plenty of meaningful debate to be had on this subject but this censorial approach feels misguided and poorly thought out. Rather than engaging with critiques of the mala gaze or with the fight against misconduct behind-the-scenes, this argument reduces the presence of onscreen sex into a simple binary decision by which we can judge the filmmakers’ moral and artistic success. The fact of the matter is that sexual content can be redundant to a film’s plot or essential to it. Either one of these approaches can be executed badly or well. But that is at the filmmakers’ discretion, not ours. If something is made in poor taste, lambast it. But don’t try to ban it. Let it fail on its own terms. The cinema is a marketplace like any other — and as in any market, the consumer will have the final say on a product’s success, ticket by ticket, seat by seat.
How to Have Sex (2023) walks the fine line between implicit and explicit. It does so in a manner so graceful that in an ideal world it should bring about an end to any internet discourse. Naturally, it won’t. But it should. It is the feature debut of writer-director Molly Manning Walker. It follows a group of English teenage girls on a summer holiday to Malia in Greece in the aftermath of their final school exams. Our protagonist Tara (Mia McKenna-Bruce) leads us into a world of bright lights and dark corners and we must follow her like Alice follows the White Rabbit. Our curiosity will not allow us otherwise.
The film unflinchingly captures the casual hyper-sexualization of any and every experience in a nightlife destination like Malia. As a result, we see the boundaries between seduction and coercion melt away as consent is disregarded and taken for granted. The story deals candidly with rape but the filmmakers lean away from sensationalized depictions of sexual violence. There are no chase scenes here, no horror movie jump-scares, and no mysterious villainous stranger. Instead, we see how there can be a sobering mundanity to the event in certain environments. The filmmakers do an extraordinary job of exploring all this through a variety of different techniques. The impressionistic sound design puts us in the mind of our protagonist with muffled audio and changing dynamics signalling a change in mood. Plus, diegetic music brings us into a pop-filled party atmosphere.
At the heart of How to Have Sex is the way in which events like this can serve to isolate the individual from everyone around them. How do you confide in your friends when even they have taken your participation in the act for granted? When they offer congratulations and encouragement instead of compassion or concern? We see that this isolation can strike even when you are amongst your closest friends. That it can be at its most potent when you find yourself deserted and cast adrift amidst a sea of people. Ultimately, we see what it truly means to have a friend who will look out for you, whether that friend is someone you have known for a long time or someone you have just met. And in the end, we understand that friendship is earned through meaningful actions and not just hollow words.
Tara comes to this understanding at a time in her life of great change. Her coming of age has been a difficult one and there remains a question of what the future will hold for her. But as witnesses to her pain, we see an essential endurance in her. This is no fairytale but Tara’s journey does offer hope in its final moments.
Worth noting is Nicolas Canniccioni’s cinematography, a moving mosaic of slow zooms and intense close-ups. The camerawork is claustrophobic and intimate in equal measure. Canniccioni alternately captures a sense of naturalistic and artificial light depending on the setting of the scene — be it dance floor, pool party, empty street, narrow laneway or sun-soaked balcony.
What stands out most in this feature is the depth offered in our characters’ interactions. The director has avoided falling into the easy trap of trite stereotypes. These people could well have been rendered as empty or shallow party-goers with nothing more complicated going on beneath the surface. Instead, we come to know their past failures and their ambitions for the future. Through their eyes, Malia becomes a purgatory between childhood and adulthood, a holding ground of sorts — a place where final decisions and reckonings are to be held off until the celebrations have come to an end.
The conflicts between Tara and her friends are realistic and recognisable. As they unwind, there are no real twists, no bombshell moments, no final conclusions. There is only a slow reveal of sympathies and frustrations. Key to the characters’ relationships is the role of jokes in our social interactions. Both Tara and her friend Skye (Lara Peake) develop a crush on their neighbour at their hotel resort. His name is Badger (Shaun Thomas) and he is an older boy from the North of England. At one point, Tara comforts Badger as he gets sick into a toilet. She recites a couple of cheesy jokes, the kind of stock set-up / punchline shtick that you would normally find on the back of a Penguin bar. Despite his upset stomach, Badger laughs. He forms a bond with Tara over the cringe-worthy gags and later offers up his own in return. But when Skye becomes jealous of this bond, she turns to belittling and embarrassing Tara. Her only defence is to maintain that she is just joking, implying that Tara is too sensitive and that any offence received is simply a product of overreaction.
In some ways this is a film about the morning after. A film about the questions we are left with when the music has stopped and we find ourselves alone, wracked with guilt and confusion. It is a stunning debut that deserves great acclaim. I can’t wait to see what Holly Manning Walker does next.
HOW TO HAVE SEX opens in Irish cinemas on November 3rd.
