I’m a big awards pundit and I follow all the various awards branches such as the BAFTAS, and the British Academy of Film and Television Arts. So when I saw a film that I had been nominated for in multiple categories called How To Have Sex, which I hadn’t heard about I was a bit perplexed. I searched this movie out to see what it was about, and it’s a bit disturbing.

Tara (Mia McKenna Bruce), Skye (Lara Peake), and Em (Enva Lewis) all go on holiday to the island off of the coast of Greece called Crete. They go to get their minds off of school and to party, get drunk, and as the title suggests have sex with random guys. As things progress on their vacation it’s not as fun as one of them had hoped it would be.

These three teenagers end up meeting a group of like-minded youngsters who are staying in the room next to them and they end up hanging out together. The room has a couple of guys Badger (Shaun Thomas) Paddy (Samuel Bottomsly) and their friend Paige (Laura Ambler). Together they hook up and have fun with the other three girls. Things aren’t exactly what they seem though.

As the group gets separated from hard partying and a night filled with debauchery an incident happens to one of the teen girls that changes the trip for her entirely. She gets lost and eventually finds her way back to the hotel but she’s not the same bubbly self she was when she arrived on the vacation. Her friends try to console her but she can’t get her mind off of what happened to her. She doesn’t know if it’s her fault or someone else’s fault entirely. 

I’ve worked at a bar and live in a college town. I’ve seen high school and young college girls bim drink off of adult men and or drink way beyond their weight. More often than not most of these girls aren’t looking after themselves and their friends aren’t either. They are just looking to have fun, party, drink and in some cases do drugs. They will gravitate towards anybody who can facilitate things for them. Sometimes they lose sight of their faculties. Things happen that they weren’t expecting. It’s not good at all but it happens more often than not. Especially in party locations or vacation spots.

The three main actresses are British and pretty much so is the whole cast. The Accents they use have to be subtitled because of the heaviness of their Accents. I was still pretty impressed by how natural these girls were on screen. It was like this was really happening in real time and I as the viewer was just following along with them for the ride. The director/writer Molly Manning Walker puts the audience in the shoes of these girls and lets us experience what they’re experiencing to some degree. It was pretty wild to say the least.

The cinematography by Nicolas Canniccioni was very good. He used natural light during the day to show the characters partying in the pool and on their balconies and club lights, street lights, and Moonlight to light the picture at night. These two different looks brought a distinct style to the film. It showed the darkness at night and then shed some light on the story during the daytime scenes. It was a great dichotomy of this story. Both worked perfectly.

How To Have Sex was well merited in getting those BAFTA Awards nominations. It has a definite style and direction that warrants multiple watches. The cast of relatively unknowns were all very good in their roles with Mia McKenna Bruce and Shaun Thomas as the standouts. This film was a bit hard for me to watch in a good way. It showed me something I saw way too much when I was working and frequenting bars in my earlier life. Things I didn’t want to be reminded of. The thing is this is something that happens way too much and needs to stop. Walker is shedding light on an epidemic that a lot of people don’t talk about until it’s too late. Girls need to stick together in situations that are depicted in this story. The how bad things can be averted.

4 stars

Dan Skip Allen