The Great British teen holiday is a rite of passage for many, whether it’s a pilgrimage to Ayia Napa or a few nights on a damp North Wales campsite. Molly Manning Walker’s Un Certain Regard-winning feature debut How To Have Sex explores the archetypal sun, sex and suspicious parents kind of post-Sixth Form holiday – a trip to ooh-ahh Malia to explore clubs, boys, and deeply questionable cocktails served in fishbowls – and digs at the darkness underneath it, particularly a sexual assault on one of the main characters.
The initial spur to make the film came from a conversation at a wedding with old friends about the wild party holidays they went on in their teens. “I went home and it came out at such a speed that I was like, ‘This is the right thing to do,’” Walker tells Empire in the new issue. As more and more of her friends and colleagues heard about what she was writing, more and more of them contributed their own stories: many focused on bad sexual experiences and a lack of understanding of consent among young people. “It felt like we had this army saying, ‘We need to tell this story’,” says Walker. “Because if you’ve not been to one of these places [abroad], you’ve had an experience in your hometown, or a different version of this event.”
Some “mind-blowing” pre-shoot workshops with young people between 16 and 20 only sharpened that feeling. Reading through a scene in which a character is sexually assaulted, “they’d be like, ‘I don’t see any issues with this scene,’” Walker says. One girl started to hector the rest of the group. “She was like, ‘Girls have to wear better clothes. They have to protect themselves and not get drunk. They have to look after their friends.’” It’s not just the sort of film we need right now – but one we've needed for a long, long time.
Read Empire’s full How To Have Sex feature in the David Fincher issue, on sale Thursday 28 September. Pre-order a copy online here, or become an Empire member to access the digital edition on launch day. How To Have Sex screens at the BFI London Film Festival this October in association with Empire – and is set for UK release on 3 November.