TIFF 2023: How to Have Sex
TIFFThe sophistication and depth that is present in Molly Manning Walker’s feature film directorial debut How to Have Sex is nothing short of mesmerising. The layers, restraint, emotional depth and ultimately execution of this venture is exemplary to a degree that it’s almost astonishing to note this is a first time venture.
In a basic description of the feature’s plot, How to Have Sex follows three young girls as they jet set off to Crete to celebrate and down their sorrows on the verge of receiving their high school results that will allow them to go to college or be forced to do wait another year and miss out. A UK rite of passage to blow off steam on a “lads” holiday – usually in Spain or Greece – with cheap alcohol, cheap drugs and loud music. Features like The Inbetweeners Movie have engaged within this British prominence to a tonally different success, critically and financially. How to Have Sex is taking a similar format to the above comparison but turning the conventional gender dynamics to a female-led venture with a deeper, far more enriching and poignant portrayal.
The beauty and sophistication behind this feature is that it grows in tangent with audience and character. For anyone in the UK, GCSE results are a frightening and daunting apprehensive moment in one’s life. Half a year before is dedicated to revision and testing to wait for an outcome that, on paper, defines one’s future and life. This is then also the age of people coming to terms with sexuality and virginity, as well as prepubescent coming to an end and the maturity of adolescence taking shape with the responsibility of independence taking precedence. All of this theme and tone is stored and examined within this film to a great detail of pathos and visual style.
The first thematic that comes to mind is teenage dread, angst and anxiety. That feeling of anxiety and apprehension bubbling in the background is captured and broods for most of the film, doing so to an enrapturing, but uncomfortable, compelling degree. It’s a theme that, with the feature, grows and evolves due to the circumstances that befalls the trio in question, but just as an impending fear, it’s captured like nothing quite seen for this type of age range, and done so without question: beautifully.
This is a feature that is holding such heavy, engaging, poignant and layered tonal thematic weight. For what ranges as honest, inconsequential teenage anxiety to darker and haunting themes of sexual assault, How to Have Sex gives each and every feeling a worthy and conscious effort to document and unravel. Walker achieves this two fold; firstly, in the aesthetic and production design, and secondly, the performances. In regards to the former, Walker produces the above mentioned motifs and thematic through a concise and undeniably effective use of the camera and editing. As it does contextually within the plot, How to Have Sex starts off ever so innocent, and therefore the aesthetic is in tangent work with that approach. The camera is still and restraint, and the edit approaches with intrigue and enthusiasm. All this changes when the tone of the feature becomes unsettling, and this is when Walker showcases a moment of terror. The terror in itself is an act of sexual assault and how it is captured – in an honest and haunting manner of intense close-ups with a conscious effort of diegetic sound eradicated to showcase this horror in a manner that presents the vulnerability and helplessness of its victim. Walker with editor Fin Oates and cinematographer Nicolas Canniccioni also aesthetically change proceedings once the audience bear witness to this horrifying act. There is a clear total tonal shift on screen. The camera stops, it shakes, it tries to re-find its balance but, throughout, never finds that stability it once had [innocence] that began this trip with enthusiasm – it is now weary and travelled. Granted, if in the wrong hands, the tonal shift could feel exploitative and a feature that takes its content for granted to provide a visual flair. This is not the case here. It is actually quite profound in that technical aspect of aesthetics and its edit in how it uses this technique to showcase disassociating in real time. These are such difficult thematics to give life and energy on screen, but here they feels effortlessly crafted and ever so immersive to touch upon the vulnerability and trauma of this feature and its characters.
It is, however, a feature that showcases two sequences of sexual assault that are uncompromising. Now, to just concentrate on these sequence themselves, it is undeniably horrifying to witness. The uncomfortable nature and how they are captured are, as mentioned, uncompromising – but that’s where it holds its power. As it’s not shot from a male gaze, it holds its power of authentic honesty and presents itself as a reality. A reality that is so often provoked for sexual provocation and gratification when in the wrong hands, Walker showcases said sequence in the context of – as silly and upsetting as this sounds in terms of having to tell people this is a reality – that this really happens to innocent, vulnerable people who were not “asking for it.” These haunting sequences are often quite controversial due to their nature but also in how they are constructed. Credit is due here for not only how Walker showcases this in uncomfortable reality but forces the audience to have to see this act for them to understand the fallout and brutality of how effected the victims are. Walker could have easily held these sequences off screen, it could be even argued it might have held even more power in that what is not seen evokes a more horrifying sense of speculation. However, it is that uncompromising nature of reality where it really happens. To make a change, people need to see how terrifying, brutal and horrifying it not only is but the haunting and vulnerable fallout that the victims have to carry. They deserve to be seen. They deserve to be heard. And they deserve their stories on screen without compromise.
Now, as powerful, haunting and poignant all the above in technical prowess and uncompromising vulnerability it showcases on screen, it is without a shadow of a doubt the openness, authenticity and craft of the feature’s performances that elevates this feature. The narrative is a very authentic and immersive experience, which demands that of its performances, all brought forward with terrific talent and depth. The stand out here is Mia McKenna-Bruce, who is utterly unshakable in her portrayal of Tara. McKenna-Bruce holds almost the entire weight and substance of the venture almost exclusively upon her shoulders. She is a rocket ship of talent of who demonstrates such skill in a varsity of depth – be that restraint, vulnerability, or psychological disassociation. Anything this feature throws at her, she unravels and provides such concrete emotive talent that elevates in every scene. The honestly and vulnerability anyone has to showcase in the aforementioned sequences of abuse is staggering enough, but McKenna-Bruce holds nothing back and further showcases the emotional fallout and poignancy of an unravelling soul with physical, emotive prowess with a deeper, richer underbelly that is incredibly well handled.
How to Have Sex is a difficult and often brutal feature to behold, but it is one that needs and deserves to be seen. Not only in its fabulous construction in terms technical ability and craft here, due to how Walker has approached this venture or to see the powerhouse of a performance from McKenna-Bruce, but also in terms of having a voice and showing a reality often denied or pushed aside in the social climate, not wanting to be seen because life moves on. This uncompromising detail of sexual assault and abuse is ever so poignant in that it gives itself a platform and voice to showcase itself without question and provide the uncomfortable reality of what a rape victim suffers, with power and strength often used against them.
