Review: How To Have Sex

Image courtesy of Imagine Film Distribution.

The British coming-of-age story "How to Have Sex" depicts modern teenage rites of passage - especially for young women - as a slow-motion horror show. The film begins as a story about a group of three British girls on holiday on the Greek islands and is replete with the requisite party-til-you-drop type of bacchanalia that you'd expect in any American entry in this subgenre from the past however many decades.

But a little less than halfway through the film - during a part when the girls attend a party at a nightclub where the sleazy MCs corral young men onto a stage and ask girls to do their best to make them hard - the film becomes something else entirely. Even though the boozy early scenes didn't exactly strike me as fun as they did their participants, the latter scenes take on an unambiguously unsettling air.

Tara is the lead character. Portrayed by a very good Mia McKenna Bruce, she is smaller in stature than her two friends - caring Em (Enva Lewis) and passive aggressive Skye (Lara Peake) - and displays a naivete in terms of who she trusts. Tara is a virgin, driven home by the "Angel" necklace around her neck with which she's frequently toying.

The girls meet another group rooming across the way from them. This trio consists of amiable Badger (Shaun Thomas), a heavily tattooed boy who obviously takes a shine toward Tara, as well as Paige (Laura Ambler), the film's most underdeveloped character who becomes a romantic interest for Em, and Paddy (Samuel Bottomley), an arrogant womanizer whom Tara makes the mistake of trusting.

In terms of setup and plot, "How to Have Sex" might seem simplistic. The three young women arrive at their exotic outpost, party quite a bit, meet the boys (and girl) next door, and party some more until things take a darker turn when a sexual encounter - in fact, more than one - raises questions regarding consent and a character appears stuck in a scenario that becomes increasingly tense.

The film's visual style remains interesting throughout. At first, the nighttime scenes have a hypnotic quality as the nightclubs visited by Tara, Em, and Skye are lit with glowing strobe lights. The daytime scenes show things in a bleaker, light-of-day manner, that is, until the switch in tone halfway through the picture. At that point, the nighttime - during which the characters drink heavily - takes on a more sinister tone, while the daylight offers a little reprieve.

"How to Have Sex" may not reinvent the wheel on the coming-of-age story, but it's a solid depiction of a young woman learning who she can lean on and who to avoid, while also portraying an unsettling initiation into the sexual rites of passage. Overall, this is a solid debut.