Alcohol by the bucket-load, rammed pool parties, cheesy chips and loads of sex — all the stereotypes of Brits abroad are in Molly Manning Walker’s feature debut causing a storm at Cannes this year, but she wants to break them all by exploring thorny issues of rape and consent.
“How to Have Sex” follows three best friends getting plastered in Crete, with one of the girls, Tara, on a mission to lose her virginity — but things soon go wrong.
Shot in a fly-on-the-wall style, Manning Walker resists showing graphic assault scenes.
“I think we as women know that experience way too much — we don’t need to be re-traumatised,” the 29-year-old Londoner told AFP at Cannes.
Instead, she focused on her characters’ emotional experiences.
“Everything was from her eyeline and everything was on her face and reading her emotion,” she said.
Her film has been one of revelations from one of the festival’s sidebar events, the Directors’ Fortnight.
Variety found it “chillingly dark”, The Guardian admired its “complex chemistry” and The Hollywood Reporter dubbed it a “hidden gem”.
– Shifting the gaze –
Manning Walker is one of an emerging crop of exciting British woman directors alongside the likes of Charlotte Wells whose “Aftersun” was last year’s unexpected breakout at Cannes, earning an Oscar nomination for star Paul Mescal.
Drawing from her own experience, Manning Walker was inspired by “the best times of my life”, but also the sexual assault she suffered at 16 — and wanted to show it all without judgement.
“It’s like living it through their lives at their eye level and trying not to say ‘Oh what is she wearing? Or why is she too drunk?'” she said.
“We should be free to drink and wear whatever we want and still not get assaulted.”
Raising the subject of sexual assault “sort of sucks the air out of the room and I think we need to open that conversation up,” she added.
“For me consent isn’t black and white, it’s not yes and no… if someone is having a bad time you should be able to recognise that.”
– One of the boys –
Manning Walker was previously cinematographer for other young British talent, including Charlotte Regan’s “Scrapper” that won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance film festival this year.
She has also made music videos and adverts, as well as two short films including “Good Thanks, You?” that screened at Cannes in 2020.
“I put up with a lot as a cinematographer and I think that’s a real man’s world… you are the head of so many burly male departments,” she said.
“I have been really lucky in my career to work with a lot of nice men in that situation but I have also worked with a lot of arseholes.”
She regrets having to play at being one of the lads to earn respect.
“You have to come in and be like ‘The football last night’. There’s just a conversation that you have to present in a certain way in order to be accepted in that world,” she said.
“That is a barrier we have to look at.”
