Tara, Skye and Em left the gray England for a vacation in Greece, just to celebrate the end of their secondary studies. Their stated goal? Drink, have fun, and meet great people. However, when the extrovert Skye sets her sights on the same boy as the introvert Tara, the first pushes the second into the arms of another. No longer sure if she wants to lose her virginity, or if she must do it in order to do like everyone else, Tara disappears one evening and only reappears the following afternoon, looking haggard. Winner of the Un Certain Regard prize at Cannes, How to Have Sex (How to make Love) candidly addresses the issue of consent and the related issue of peer pressure. Filmmaker Molly Manning Walker talks to us about this very personal film.
“The story is based on many vacations like this that I spent when I was a teenager,” confides the director and screenwriter joined in London by videoconference.
“It’s a combination of memories, experiences… And then, the film also reflects the way we teach each other how to have sex, among young people; the pressure we put on each other to “get rid of” our virginity. It was both painful and liberating, revisiting it all. Previously, I had never felt that I could talk about this, about consent, in society… It’s still surprising, since it concerns so many people…”
Throughout, we follow the three friends, but with a strong focus on Tara. Tara who is under pressure from all sides, sometimes indirect, sometimes direct, ordering her to “take action”. In this hyperalcoholic context, saying “no” does not seem to be one of the possibilities.
Hold up a mirror
In the role of Tara, Mia McKenna-Bruce is exceptional. The amount of often contradictory emotions that she manages to convey without saying a word is extraordinary.
“Mia is such a superstar in my eyes,” opines the filmmaker. She has this rather particular ability to suggest several things, several states, at the same time. It’s as if her exterior and interior are running simultaneously on two parallel courses, and she is in perfect control of both. »
This, while exuding a confusing naturalness. The same goes for the production of Molly Manning Walker. That is to say that the whole is absolutely authentic, but is no less dependent on great rigor.
“My approach was to overplan, to really place everything, and then destroy everything afterwards, in order to get an imperfect result. When you leave things purely to chance in the hope of making them natural, it never works. So planning was key: every prop was thought out, every costume was overthought, and every scene was hyper-choreographed. It was only after I had mastered all that that I let go, in order to let the film come to life. »
Basically, this is the very definition of “controlled chaos”. Thoughtful, Molly Manning Walker opines:
“I admit that the film is better than I expected. »
When we ask her to elaborate, she mentions a pot luck shoot, specifying:
“All departments collaborated super-succinctly and ultra-effectively: everyone understood the point and intent from the start, and worked together to support each other. And that’s rarer than you think: as a director of photography, I’ve participated in numerous shoots where everyone did their own thing, focusing only on their own department and thinking in circuits farm. There is a beauty in the union of forces and talents that occurred on film. »
A film that was close to Molly Manning Walker’s heart not only because of its autobiographical nature, but because of the subject matter.
“I feel so challenged and passionate about the issue of consent. I sincerely think that the film succeeds in holding up a mirror to people. And when people talk about the film, they kind of reveal what they think about consent. It was fascinating, the discussions around the film, at the festivals where it was presented. »
Feeling seen
Speaking of festivals, the Cannes one turned out to be an unexpected surprise.
“With the team, we didn’t really have time to think about it: we finished the film on Friday, and on Tuesday, we were in Cannes! Since then, a kind of wonderful madness has continued. You have to understand… For about four months we were in a dark room thinking that no one would like the movie, and then all of a sudden we brought him into the world together, and he’s having his own adventure… You know, my primary goal, what I hoped, was that women would really feel challenged by the film. »
In Cannes and elsewhere, this was the case, but the phenomenon of identification did not stop there, as Molly Manning Walker had the opportunity to realize.
“What I didn’t anticipate is that many men recognize their own experiences, and understand that they don’t need to appear powerful and strong and so confident in matters of sex. And above all, that they don’t have to put pressure on each other regarding sex. »
This is so that the word “no” is understood and accepted, but also so that the word “no” is really an option.
The film How to Have Sex hits theaters on February 9.