Review: How to have sex

Mia McKenna-Bruce leads the charge when she and her friends go on holiday to Crete. Photo / Supplied

If the thought of watching a bunch of rambunctious young people on a holiday bender in Greece makes you feel old and exhausted, you’re not alone. But ignore the bluntness of this film’s title and prepare to be surprised.

It’s an excellent debut feature from 30-year-old British writer-director Molly Manning Walker who, as a cinematographer, shot last year’s Scrapper for her mate Charlotte Regan. Her spot-on (and somewhat depressing) depiction of English youth travelling to the Continent for a package deal of booze, sun and sex won the Un Certain Regard award at Cannes.

Petite firecracker Tara (a wonderful Mia McKenna-Bruce) goes on vacay with her besties: smart Em (newcomer Enva Lewis) and sassy shit-stirrer Skye (Lara Peake). They are schoolgirls anxiously awaiting their exam results, but play older to fit in with the other gangs of young people who’ve descended on the Cretan coastal town of Malia. “Best holiday ever!” the girls crow on arrival. Tara’s gift of the gab secures them a hotel room with a pool view (“Best view I’ve ever seen in my life!!”) and the girls get (un)dressed up to go out with some lads, Paddy and Badger, from the room next door.

Amidst the teens’ incessant loud jabbering, there’s lots of talk about who’s going to get laid the most, and Tara (the group’s sole virgin) is keen to be deflowered. But in a place where alcohol flows freely from wake-up to pass-out, and the sexual innuendo reeks stronger than the chlorine, things can switch suddenly from fun to fraught.

Manning Walker’s film is concisely edited, the dialogue crisp and utterly realistic, the performances completely natural. She conveys the emotional rollercoaster of Tara’s holiday hopes and dashed dreams with a subtle increase in tension, use of slow zooms and long, laden pauses in her characters’ perplexed conversations.

Nowadays, my experience of these kinds of “young people do dumb things” movies (Kids, Spring Breakers and the like) is to feel middle-aged frustration at their foolish choices or reckless behaviour. But with two terrific leads in McKenna-Bruce and Shaun Thomas (grown up since 2013′s brilliant The Selfish Giant) as Tara and would-be beau Badger, the kids are so likeable and so real that you can’t help but hope they’ll be all right.

Rating out of 5: ★★★★½

How To Have Sex, directed by Molly Manning Walker, is in cinemas now.