Three friends go to celebrate the end of high school by the sea. Objective: to dance, drink, and above all get laid, in what should be the vacation of their lives.
Their names are Tara, Skye and Em, and they are the best of friends. The kind who are accomplices and droolers at the same time, saying I love you every evening, taking each other’s hands while dancing furiously, and stroking each other’s hair, late at night, sitting on the floor in front of the toilet bowl. toilet.
And let’s say that in their festive complex somewhere in the Mediterranean where they will find themselves partying for a week, it’s not exactly moderation that reigns.
It is on this stereotypical rosewater and heavily hopped premise that the very first feature film by British director Molly Manning Walker begins (a “revelation” according to the Guardian), which here manages to subtly move away from the type scenario Spring Breakto tell the most complex and poignant of stories, with all its shades of gray, contradictory emotions included: consent.
It seems didactic, summarized like that, but it is not. And it’s not for nothing that the film, which received a standing ovation at Cannes, also won the Un Certain Regard prize. In fact, we mainly follow young Tara, barely upsetting Mia McKenna Bruce (The Witcher, Vampire Academy, Persuasion), as festive although a little less sassy than her friends Skye (sneaky Lara Peake) and Em (more reserved, but ultimately essential Enva Lewis).
And this is where everything gets complicated, because in this series of parties, Tara hopes to get rid of her unloved “virgin” status. If her friends support her, probably too much, we immediately suspect with this subtle unease, but so well played, that it can only go wrong.
There lies the strength of the scenario (which, yes, comes down to precisely that) and especially of the acting, which manages to highlight all the complexity of human relationships in general, and of relationships between teenagers doped with hormones in particular. Girls and guys, it should be pointed out. All against a backdrop of lightness, an embarrassed smile here, a shy no there, an insistent yes further on, and we guess the ending.
Everything is suggested. Nothing is really said. But hard to make more felt. The unsaid punctures the screen, and it’s a tour de force.
Let us salute the power games, so well done, subtle manipulations here and there, which ring so true that one would believe it. Finally, let us salute the frank friendships, unforeseen and unexpected, far from clichés, which ultimately give hope because nothing is exactly black or white. We still need to talk about it. And this film is an ideal springboard, realistic, nuanced, perfectly trash to do it.
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Drama
How to Have Sex (V.F.: How to make Love)
Molly Manning Walker
With Mia McKenna Bruce, Lara Peake, Samuel Bottomley and Shaun Thomas
1:38 a.m.