Volume 126: How To Have Sex
The Voice of Energy Vol. 126
Oh, hello.
Here's what happened. For one week, my family was freezed out of our house, leaving us in a hotel room and leaving me with little privacy or patience to watch movies for review. When we were finally able to get into our home, we realized our Internet router had been fried by the constant power surges, leaving me with no way to watch screeners. Then... I got sick. Three weeks later, I was finally able to sit down with a movie and write about it.
To sum up: I'm back and ready to get into a regular schedule of screeners and reviews, starting with a look at a fine first feature from British filmmaker Molly Manning Walker.
I did manage to get to catch some films in the interim including The Zone of Interest (I loved it but I absolutely can see why it left many folks cold), Trainspotting (forgot I had pre-ordered Criterion's 4K release), Argylle (absolute garbage; my first walk out of 2024), American Fiction (brilliant), Ken Russell's The Devils (exactly as over-the-top and visually enthralling as I had hoped), and I.S.S. (eh...it was fine).
How To Have Sex (2023, dir. Molly Manning Walker)
It all started with a blow job.
When U.K. filmmaker Molly Manning Walker was at a wedding, reminiscing with schoolmates and friends about a wild summer holiday they took as teens to Majorca, she recalled an act of fellatio taking place on stage at a nightclub. Realizing the impact that that moment had on both her and many of her mates, Walker developed How To Have Sex, her quietly devastating feature debut about a trio of teens, fresh off taking their GCSEs, on a hedonistic rite-of-passage trip to Malia.
The writer/director recreates that moment of public debauchery at a heavily-branded pool party marked by other bawdy “games” meant to keep the young crowd liquored up and ready to spend their cash. The scene is the fulcrum point in the journey of Tara (Mia McKenna-Bruce), a 16-year-old warily but gamely teetering through nights of sun-baked boozing and clubbing — all with the underlying goal of potentially losing her virginity.
She and her mates Skye (Tara Peake) and Em (Enya Lewis) have found their way into the company of a trio of fellow Brits, including the sweet but dim Badger (Shaun Thomas) and the brutish Paddy (Samuel Bottomly), who egg the young women on and vie for their attention. It’s Badger who receives the onstage blowjob; a moment that sends Tara reeling and stumbling into the arms of Paddy. After a quick splash in the ocean, the two have sex on the beach, an act that, though Tara consents to it, skirts the edge of assault.
In less capable hands, How To Have Sex could have been corrosive and exploitative. There’s plenty of skin on display throughout but no nudity, and a scene of undoubtful assault that takes place later in the film is handled thoughtfully. We see the rippling aftereffects but are spared much of the ugliness of the act itself. Walker maintains that sharp balance between the joys of the night and the pain and nausea of the morning. (Keep an eye on the hotel rooms and streets of “The Strip” as they get messier and more disgusting as the film goes on.) After Tara is essentially abandoned by Paddy after their moment on the beach, she falls in with another group of revelers who look after her and treat her to a night of dancing and pool shenanigans.
But what overshadows the whole film is this cloud that follows most young women around as they head toward adulthood and how the pressures of a vodka-soaked holiday only makes it all stormier. The world wants them to hurry up and be sexually viable, often before they’re anywhere near ready to handle the power and consequences of the act. It’s a contradiction perfectly embodied by McKenna-Bruce whose wide eyes and soft features draw forth the conflict stewing in Tara’s mind as she seeks the approval of the young men in her orbit while being terrified at what that might lead to.
How To Have Sex is in theaters now.
FTA Pick of the Week
Our regular feature — a recommendation of a movie to watch that is hiding below the fold on one of the major streaming services. In other words: fuck the algorithm.
Georgia (1995, dir. Ulu Grosbard)
As proven by her recent turns in the fifth season of Fargo and The Woman in the Window, Jennifer Jason Leigh continues to be one of the most nimble and daring actors of our modern age. To get a small taste of her enormous range, step back nearly 30 years to this incredible drama directed by the late Ulu Grosbard and written by Leigh's mother Barbara Turner. In it, Leigh plays Sadie, a musician cowering in the shadow of her famous older sister, the titular Georgia (played with pitch-perfect reserve by Mare Winningham), and salving her limitations as an artist through drug and alcohol abuse. Winningham drew all the awards season attention, including a nomination for Best Supporting Actress at the Oscars, but it's Leigh who carries the weight of this film with a textured and layered performance wherein she embodies the raw nerves and never satisfied hunger of an addict.
Georgia is streaming now on Hoopla.
Thanks for reading, friends. Barring any other illnesses or freak weather issues or Internet outages, I will return next week with a new edition of the newsletter. Hope to see you then.
Artwork for this edition is by Nakahira Takuma whose work is on display at The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo through April 7.
This newsletter was written on the unceded land where once stood the traditional village sites of the Multnomah, Wasco, Cowlitz, Kathlamet, Clackamas, Bands of Chinook, Tualatin, Kalapuya, Molalla, and many other tribes who made their homes along the Columbia River creating communities and summer encampments to harvest and use the plentiful natural resources of the area.