Spring Break in Malia! That’s what the main characters of How to Have Sex, Molly Manning Walker’s debut feature, have on their mind. Under the colored strobe lights, the brisk beachside sun and a little emotional coercion, the group are set them with a poolside room that should make for the perfect vacation. Escaping the looming announcement of their college entrance exams, the girls (Taz, Skye, and Mia) go on a quest seeking fun, thrills and–of course–to get laid.
To focus on this film’s premise is to almost escape the point and poignant message of How to Have Sex. The film is deliberately lacking plot in many parts of the film, utilizing the mundane yet wild atmosphere that the girls find themselves in to create a sense of realism that ultimately reveals an emotional vulnerability and need for self-discovery. The film explores this through almost repetitive beats as we see them do the same things, dance, drink, vibe to music, smoke, swim, eat chips, kiss, and repeat. These elements seem so prevalent in the first half of the film that it almost becomes redundant but Walker recognizes the habits that the girls immediately adopt on vacation as we do in real life.
Then, new elements are added in as Tara is cat-called by an intriguing man named Badger. When he and his friends Patrick and Paige join the group, they create new dynamics and reveal the ways in which we stumble through life with other people, even if that’s not always for the better. Bolstering an excellent ensemble of performances from these young actors, the film is able to create a sense of realism. We can immediately recognize Taz, Skye, and Mia as real young people, who have a tendency to want to eat chips and try to push each other to party and enjoy being young. Much of it feels like a debaucherous romp but the sense of care put into the filmmaking and performances slowly reveals the more humanizing story that might ultimately break your heart but make you know you need to keep on living.
How to Have Sex is now playing at TIFF ’23. For more information, click here.
