How to Have Sex isn’t the cheeky teen comedy its title suggests – it’s a raw, unflinching look at the confusion, pressure, and harsh realities surrounding teenage sexuality and consent. Following three British teens on their post-exam trip to Greece, the film exposes the dangerous knowledge gaps left by inadequate sex education and the emotional fallout of youthful naivety. More than just a movie, it’s a vital conversation starter that every teenager – and former teenager – should see.
The title How to Have Sex might suggest a raucous, cheeky teen sex comedy, somewhere between American Pie, The Inbetweeners and a Carry On movie. Instead, this is an achingly sensitive and honest drama about sex, booze, consent, friendship, the painful precipice of adulthood, and the secret history of one messy weekend. Written and directed by Molly Manning Walker, it’s the latest in a recent string of excellent, heartfelt directorial debuts by a new generation of British female filmmakers, including Charlotte Regan’s Scrapper, Georgia Oakley’s Blue Jean, and most famously, Charlotte Wells’ gorgeous, melancholy Aftersun, which earned an Oscar nomination for All of Us Strangers co-star Paul Mescal.
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Like Aftersun, How to Have Sex locates its drama in the strange, suspended reality of a cheap package vacation on the Mediterranean: a world of flimsy hotel rooms, idle beach days, noisy pool parties, and karaoke in neon-lit boozing taverns. Both films have an affectionate eye for this traditional escape for working-class Brits, while being frank about its ugly side.
But where Wells’ film is a memory piece, dreamily exploring the inner lives of an 11-year-old girl and her very young, kind, but lost dad in the late 1990s, Manning Walker is up to something much more precise and contemporary. With a patient, compassionate, but penetrating gaze, How to Have Sex maps out the dangerous, murky territory of teenage sexuality and friendships.
Tara (Mia McKenna-Bruce), Skye (Lara Peake), and Em (Enva Lewis) are three 16-year-old girls, cutting loose at the low-rent party resort of Malia on the Greek island of Crete. They’re awaiting exam results, and the future looms uncomfortably: Em is expecting good news, but Tara and Skye aren’t. They’re not going to waste this summer of freedom together before reality comes crashing back in. The girls go hard, clubbing on the garish strip, drinking to extreme excess, and losing themselves in a throng of young bodies clad in tiny scraps of acid-colored clothing.
The one thing on their minds above all others is hooking up, and all three fixate on it with a brash, hungry bravado. But Tara is a virgin, which brings extra dimensions of desperation and uncertainty into the mix. It also means incessant peer pressure – mostly from Skye, the kind of semi-toxic friend who masks her own insecurity in constant teasing and jockeying for seniority. The girls fall in with a group in an adjoining suite; good-hearted party boy Badger (Shaun Thomas) and Tara hit it off, but jealously, Skye pushes Tara toward Badger’s leering friend Paddy (Samuel Bottomley).
McKenna-Bruce is a revelation as Tara: Watching her in How to Have Sex is reminiscent of seeing Florence Pugh in breakout roles like Lady Macbeth, and not just because of her tiny stature, husky voice, and blazing charisma. She gives Tara a pugnacious energy and natural social command, but also the fragility and vulnerability of the child she partly still is. Her brassiness overcompensates for the fact that she still feels younger than her friends, and secretly isn’t quite as ready to abandon herself to the adult world.
The heartbreaking thing about How to Have Sex is how that world lets her down. Because it’s not an adult world, not really; it’s an adolescent illusion, a hedonistic, horny fantasy disguising a morass of insecurity, inexperience, and longing.
But what makes the movie beautiful as well as crushing is Manning Walker’s sensitivity and generosity. She’s not interested in writing off Malia’s party culture as a callous cesspool, or damning all teenage boys as predators. Just when another movie might go into finger-wagging cautionary-tale mode, Tara falls in with a group of older strangers who show her the genuinely safe, cathartic release that partying can bring. Manning Walker finds nuance everywhere: Badger is kind, but naïvely selfish. Paddy is gross, but conditioned into it by a rough upbringing steeped in toxic masculinity.
How to Have Sex has a deliberate smallness – it’s about things that sadly happen all the time, that scar young lives but don’t necessarily damage them beyond repair. But it also has a huge emotional resonance that reverberates long after the movie ends. It’s about those fleeting events that break you and make you at the same time, and it has a lot of wisdom about this tender and difficult moment in life that every horny teenager should hear, and everyone who once was one will recognize. It’s a perfect coming-of-age movie.
Why should teenagers and former teens watch “How to Have Sex” now
Teenagers and former teens should watch How to Have Sex now because it offers a brutally honest and compassionate exploration of the complexities of teenage sexuality, consent, and peer pressure that are often misunderstood or overlooked in traditional sex education. The film vividly portrays the murky realities of sexual experiences, including the nuances of consent-highlighting that consent is continuous, can be withdrawn, and is not simply a binary yes or no. It also addresses the crucial role of men holding other men accountable for harmful behavior, a topic rarely depicted with such clarity and importance. By presenting authentic conversations and situations that many young people face but lack the language to express, the film fills a dangerous knowledge gap fueled by inadequate education and misinformation. Ultimately, How to Have Sex serves as a vital cultural touchstone that can foster deeper understanding and dialogue about sexual consent and respect among teenagers and those who have recently navigated adolescence.
How can watching this film improve my understanding of consent nuances
Watching How to Have Sex can improve your understanding of the nuances of consent by presenting a realistic and complex portrayal of how consent is communicated, interpreted, and sometimes misunderstood in real-life situations. The film shows that consent is not simply a clear-cut “yes” or “no” moment but a continuous, dynamic process that involves communication, empathy, and mutual respect. For example, a key scene depicts a sexual encounter where legal consent might be present, yet the ethical and emotional dimensions reveal discomfort and miscommunication, highlighting that legal consent does not always equate to ethical or enthusiastic consent.
The film encourages viewers to look beyond isolated moments and consider the broader context-such as the characters’ motivations, emotions, and social pressures-that shape how consent is given or compromised. This approach helps dismantle harmful stereotypes, like the idea that it is solely the responsibility of girls to clearly communicate consent or that boys always initiate sex in a transactional way. Instead, it emphasizes that sex should be a mutual exploration where both parties actively negotiate and agree to what happens.
By using the film as a catalyst for discussion rather than a definitive lesson, viewers can engage with the complexities of consent, including nonverbal cues, emotional states, and the importance of ongoing communication, which are often missing from traditional sex education. This nuanced understanding fosters empathy and critical thinking about respect and responsibility in sexual relationships.
