British film “How to Have Sex” will strike you hard at first while its adolescent heroine and her two female friends go wild for some fun and excitement. As clearly reflected by the very title of the film, they are willing to go all the way for sex, and the movie frankly depicts what drives them toward more fun and excitement as slowly focusing on the inner turmoil of its heroine, who turns out to be a lot less confident and vulnerable than she looks at first.

The main background of the film is a party resort of Malia on the Greek island of Crete, where a girl named Tara (Mia McKenna-Bruce) and her two friends Skye (Lara Peake) and Em (Enva Lewis) come for enjoying a rites-of-passage holiday just like many other girls and boys around her age. Once they arrive in Malia, they have a little fun time together on the beach near to the resort, and that is just the beginning to be followed by lots of excitement during next several days and nights.

As they freely throw themselves into one wild moment and another along with many others around them, we get to know a bit more about each other of them. While Em is almost certain about going to college after her high school graduation, Tara and Skye are not so sure about what to do next, because their grades will not be enough for going to college. In addition, Tara also feels rather insecure just because she has never had sex unlike her two friends, so she lets herself driven more by not only her growing curiosity but also the peer pressure from them.

And then it looks like there is a good chance for her first sex. Tara and her friends happen to draw the attention from a boy staying next to their room along with his two friends, and this lad, who is called Badger (Shaun Thomas), gladly invites them to join him and his two friends Paddy (Samuel Bottomley) and Paige (Laura Ambler). Spending more time with Badger and his two friends, Tara becomes more interested in getting closer to Badger, and it seems that Badger is also attracted to her.

While its main characters continue to throw themselves into more fun and excitement, the movie gradually immerses us into the heated atmosphere surrounding them and many others, and director/writer Molly Manning Walker, who incidentally made a feature film debut here in this film after making several short films (She also recently served as the cinematographer of Charlotte Regan’s debut feature film “Scrapper” (2023), by the way), and her crew members including cinematographer Nicolas Canniccioni did a commendable job of imbuing the screen with a considerable degree of realism and verisimilitude. Never feeling obtrusive at all, the camera fluidly moves here and there around the characters during several key sequences in the film, and we come to feel more like an invisible bystander around the main characters.

It is not much of a spoiler to tell you that our young heroine comes to have sort of a rude awakening around the middle of the story, and that is where the story accordingly becomes more uncomfortable than before. Letting herself become more confused and intoxicated after that point, she eventually gets what she wants, but, not so surprisingly, it is not exactly what she hoped for, and that consequently causes a lot of anxiety and shame in her mind.

Now this sounds like your average cautionary tale, but the movie firmly sticks to its non-judgmental position while conveying to us more of its young heroine’s devastation and disillusionment during the aftermath. At one point, we see her walking alone in the middle of an empty street which looks quite different to her now, and this brief but strikingly stark image conveys to us everything we need to know about her current state of mind.

Nevertheless, the movie also does not resort to any cheap melodramatic moment, even when Tara gets more confused and devastated during its last act. There is a little moment of emotional ventilation between her and one of her friends around the end of the story, but the movie wisely does not overplay this moment at all, and we are touched as sensing a bit of hope for its young heroine during the very last shot.

Walker draws good natural performances from her young main cast members, who are all believable as filling their respective parts with enough youthful energy. Gradually holding the center, Mia McKenna-Bruce ably illustrates her character’s tricky emotional journey along the story, and she is especially heartbreaking when her character goes through more pain and humiliation later in the story. While effortless in their casual interactions with McKenna-Bruce on the screen, Lara Peake and Enva Lewis hold their own place well around their co-star, and Shaun Thomas, Samuel Bottomley, and Laura Ambler are also solid in their substantial supporting roles.

On the whole, “How to Have Sex”, which won the top prize of the Un Certain Regard section when it was shown at the Cannes Film Festival early in last year, is engaging for its frank and sensitive depiction of adolescent sexuality, and Walker demonstrates here that she is another new interesting filmmaker to watch. I am certainly impressed by her deft handling of story, mood, and character, and it will be interesting to see what may come next from her.