Anyone seeking to describe “How to Have Sex” for potential American viewers is liable to land on the term “spring break” in the process: It is, after all, a story about hard-partying teenagers heading to a sunny coastal resort for several nights of boozy, horny, wholly unsupervised antics. Yet the teens here are British, the destination one of those grisly Mediterranean club hubs geared entirely toward British tourists, and the partying so distinctly British in its aims and etiquette that the translation hardly applies. The vacation presented here is as much like a quintessential spring break as Molly Manning Walker‘s fresh, head-turning debut feature is like Harmony Korine’s “Spring Breakers” — superficially similar in its pile-driving social chaos and eye-searing fluorescent visuals, but with a very different, damaged heart beating underneath it all.
Molly Manning Walker was on a boat to Greece last May when she got a call to say she should probably turn around as soon as possible and get back to the Cannes Film Festival.
She’d already made a major splash in the south of France with her debut feature “How to Have Sex,” a cautionary tale following three British teenage girls on a wild and intoxicated summer holiday that takes a dark turn over the issue of sexual consent. The film, which had been picked up by Mubi prior to Cannes, became one of the breakout hits of the 2023 event, enjoying critical acclaim, standing ovations and earmarking Manning Walker as an exciting new cinematic voice. The festival had been, in no uncertain terms, a resounding success.
“It was a such a magical experience — and what a place to have the birthing of the film,” she says, speaking from Sundance ahead of “How to Have Sex’s” U.S. premiere. “We had our cast and crew there, we had a really lovely party to celebrate the launch of the film, so I’d left in a very content manner.”
This content manner didn’t factor in actually winning the Un Certain Regard competition, so Manning Walker had packed up her bags, driven to Italy with some of her crew and was on boat heading towards Greece (where “How to Have Sex” shot in 2022) when her phone rang and she was told to “just get on the next plane.”
Chaos ensued. Not thinking she’d need it, she had put her passport in the middle of her suitcase, which she was hastily trying to unpack in the back of a car speeding to the airport. Upon arrival, she ran to the check-in desk only to discover she’d booked a flight for the wrong day. She found another, one that would get her there just in time. But this was then delayed. Eventually, she landed in Nice, left her bag in the luggage hall and jumped straight in a car, sprinting into the Un Certain Regard awards ceremony — wearing the unlikely awards ceremony combo of Adidas sports shorts and a green T-shirt — merely minutes after “How to Have Sex” had been announced as main winner (a delay that had prompted jury head John C. Reilly to sing to the audience while they waited).
“I was drenched in sweat — I stank,” she explains. “But I’m so glad I got there. I wouldn’t have realized how sad I’d be to miss it until I got there.”
Eight months on and the incredible journey of “How to Have Sex” has continued long beyond that sweat-soaked Cannes awards ceremony. Following a short festival run, in late 2023 the film landed an incredible 13 British Independent Film Awards nominations (eventually winning three, including best lead performance for its breakout star Mia McKenna-Bruce), quickly followed by three nominations at the European Film Awards, where Manning Walker was name European Discovery of the Year (an award previously won by the likes of Pedro Almodovar, Kenneth Branagh and Steve McQueen). Earlier this week, it landed three BAFTA nominations, including outstanding British film; debut by a British writer, director or producer; and best casting (McKenna-Bruce also has a BAFTA Rising Star nomination).
Films are made of and from places: the locations they are filmed in, the settings they are meant to evoke, the geographies where they are imagined and worked on. What place tells its own story about your film, whether a particularly challenging location that required production ingenuity or a map reference that inspired you personally, politically or creatively?
How to Have Sex is set in European party town. Teenagers from all over the UK flock to various Mediterranean towns. It’s funny that we recreate our culture somewhere hot. Pints and full English breakfasts. These towns are all fairly similar. They exist outside of the local culture. Like a mini Britain on sea.
When I was writing the film, I had such a strong image of Magaluf (in Majorca, Spain) in my mind. Magaluf was the party town that I remember most vividly out of all the trips I took when I was 16/17/18. So naturally we scouted there first. Whilst on the scout I had an almost out of body experience watching teenagers repeat the nights that we had once lived. It felt like a time warp. I was transported back to how it felt to be on holiday for the first time without our parents. The elation, the ability to keep going, the hangover.
When it became impossible to shoot in Magaluf I was quite heartbroken. Magaluf had these huge cruise ship like hotels with corridors that ran forever and ever. Out the window all you could see was other hotel windows. It was never ending. It was dense.
Due to politics we started to look at Malia (in Crete, Greece) to replace Magaluf. I was worried it was too nice. The hotels were cute, and the mountains made it almost picturesque. But in hindsight it was a bit of a blessing. I think the film would have been much bleaker had it been set in such an oppressive place. There would be no relief. Your brain would easily understand that what Tara is experiencing could be happening to multiple people each night. Instead, the first half of the film can offer some lightness.
I think it’s funny how films are these evolving beasts and as you make decisions along the way they chop and change, and it forms its own unique identity. Malia will now always be the right location for the film. It will always be the backdrop to lots of our first feature film experiences.
Films are made of and from places: the locations they are filmed in, the settings they are meant to evoke, the geographies where they are imagined and worked on. What place tells its own story about your film, whether a particularly challenging location that required production ingenuity or a map reference that inspired you personally, politically or creatively?
How to Have Sex is set in European party town. Teenagers from all over the UK flock to various Mediterranean towns. It’s funny that we recreate our culture somewhere hot. Pints and full English breakfasts. These towns are all fairly similar. They exist outside of the local culture. Like a mini Britain on sea.
When I was writing the film, I had such a strong image of Magaluf (in Majorca, Spain) in my mind. Magaluf was the party town that I remember most vividly out of all the trips I took when I was 16/17/18. So naturally we scouted there first. Whilst on the scout I had an almost out of body experience watching teenagers repeat the nights that we had once lived. It felt like a time warp. I was transported back to how it felt to be on holiday for the first time without our parents. The elation, the ability to keep going, the hangover.
When it became impossible to shoot in Magaluf I was quite heartbroken. Magaluf had these huge cruise ship like hotels with corridors that ran forever and ever. Out the window all you could see was other hotel windows. It was never ending. It was dense.
Due to politics we started to look at Malia (in Crete, Greece) to replace Magaluf. I was worried it was too nice. The hotels were cute, and the mountains made it almost picturesque. But in hindsight it was a bit of a blessing. I think the film would have been much bleaker had it been set in such an oppressive place. There would be no relief. Your brain would easily understand that what Tara is experiencing could be happening to multiple people each night. Instead, the first half of the film can offer some lightness.
I think it’s funny how films are these evolving beasts and as you make decisions along the way they chop and change, and it forms its own unique identity. Malia will now always be the right location for the film. It will always be the backdrop to lots of our first feature film experiences.
I caught it last year and thought it was pretty strong, very uncomfortable in places but rather earnest and honest for the most part. I imagine people will be put off by it’s salacious sounding title.
For most young actors lucky enough to experience a major career break, the simple act of navigating this exciting but daunting new world — be it back-to-back media arrangements or meetings with agents, casting directors and producers — is more than enough to deal with.
But Mia McKenna-Bruce, the star of buzzy Brit drama “How to Have Sex,” which launches in the U.S. on Feb. 2, has had to navigate all this while also juggling becoming a mother for the first time.
Not that the double whammy of these two momentous, life-changing experiences seems to trouble her. In fact, she claims they went hand-in-hand.
“I think the insanity of it all has actually worked really well,” the 26-year-old tells Variety.
“I did really struggle at first because I couldn’t wrap my head around having any kind of life. But then I went back to doing press six weeks after [I gave birth] and it was the best thing I could have done, because I was like, ‘Oh my god, I can still keep doing this thing that I love and also have my baby that I love, all at the same time.’ I’m quite a chaotic person anyway. So for me, this sort of chaos really works.”
McKenna-Bruce was heavily pregnant when she went to Cannes in 2023 with Molly Manning-Walker’s debut feature, which follows a group of girls on an intoxicated summer trip to Greece and marked her first significant lead role in a film (she was previously best known for British children’s drama series “Tracey Baker Returns”).
“How to Have Sex,” which already had Mubi on board for various territories (including the U.S. and U.K.), ended up becoming one of the talking points of the festival, where it won the main Un Certain Regard prize and began an upward trajectory that hasn’t stopped since.
Alongside the numerous awards amassed by the film and Manning-Walker over the last nine months, the applause for McKenna-Bruce’s revelatory performance as Tara, a 16-year-old whose holiday of a lifetime turns sour, has been just as loud. In December, she won best lead performance at the British Independent Film Awards from under the noses of fellow nominees Andrew Scott and Jodie Comer, and was recently nominated for a BAFTA Rising Star award, going up against the likes of Jacob Elordi and Ayo Edebiri.
In the middle of the growing crescendo of acclaim (but just before it started tipping into awards season), her son Leo was born.
And so, McKenna-Bruce has been switching back and forth between dual roles as a rising film star and a doting new parent, from magazine photoshoots to nappy changes, red carpets to baby bath times.
For “How to Have Sex’s” Italian premiere in Rome in October, she took a then 6-week-old Leo along. His bags, sadly, didn’t follow (teaching her a valuable lesson that packing absolutely everything, from sterilizations to baby formula, just isn’t necessary — “we turned up with nothing, but it was fine”). For her upcoming short trip to New York for the U.S. launch, as it’s a longer flight, she’s leaving him at home with her partner. Both frenzied and unpredictable worlds of being mother to a newborn baby and lead actor in a much-hyped indie film appear to be getting along just fine. They’re also keeping her grounded.
“I’m getting to do all this exciting stuff, and then going home and being puked on,” she says.
And, following a major breakout role, McKenna-Bruce has also been trying to answer that all-important question of what to do next amid the barrage of interest.
If it were up to her, she admits she’d just accept everything that came her way: “I just want to work! I’ll do it all!” she says. Thankfully, there’s a team around her in the form of her U.K. agent, 42’s Molly Cowan, and now CAA, who signed her after seeing “How to Have Sex” in Cannes — and they’re taking a more measured approach.
“They’re brilliant about being like, ‘This is all very exciting, but we need to make sure that the next steps are in line with where we want to go,’” she says, adding that the plan is to avoid immediately doing something similar to “How to Have Sex.” “They’re very much strategizing. ‘How to Have Sex’ has obviously been incredible, but we don’t want it to be a fluke. It’s about the longevity of it all.”
On that front, there are several projects on the horizon, some signed and sealed (but yet to be formerly announced), and others still in discussion. On one upcoming feature, McKenna-Bruce says she’s come onboard early as the lead and will be involved in conversations as the film comes together.
More than anything, the most dramatic career shift in the not-even-a-year since “How to Have Sex” launched in Cannes is McKenna-Bruce is now being courted by the very same producers and casting directors whose offices she previously sat nervously waiting outside ahead of an audition. This time, they’re actually asking her what she’d like them to get her a role in.
“It’s changed my life, definitely,” she says of “How to Have Sex.” “But It’s been very full circle. I’m like, ‘Hang on a minute, I was here a few years ago and nobody wanted to know!’”
Despite now having a team of people around her to help shepherd her career to the next stage, McKenna-Bruce does have one important decision she has to make herself: who to take as her plus-one to the BAFTA awards on Feb. 18.
“My mum and dad really want to come, and they’ve both been a huge, huge part of all of this,” she says. “I may just let them fight it out.”
You don't get an award for "most threads started."
It is literally "post whoring" as defined in the forum rules. I've reported him multiple times in the past few weeks & it does absolutely no good. He's started at least TWENTY new threads in the past 24 hours. If the mods don't stop this, I'm leaving.
Saw this at the theater earlier this week. It’s good. It felt like a really authentic and honest portrayal of what young people sometimes go through when first experimenting with sex, drugs, and alcohol.
I saw this at a Regal theater and even though the film is 100% in English it was subtitled. I assume the distributor added the subtitles and they were in fact necessary. Besides the thick accents there’s scenes where dialogue is heard from multiple characters off camera making it somewhat hard to discern who is speaking and what is being said. Also scenes with dialogue over loud club music, party scenes, etc.
The movie has a fun coming-of-age vibe, but also deals with serious issues. Never in a preachy melodramatic way thankfully. Definitely worth seeing!
This film was aweful, not even close to what the title suggests. Kids did a much better job at showing the Fd up world we've created for young people. This is just a clown show with poor writing and assumptions.
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How to Have Sex (2023)
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