This article contains mentions of sexual assault and mild spoilers for the film How To Have Sex

It was a headline and meme making gaffe. Backstage at the BAFTA awards last month, in front of photographers and a lineup of young actors including Phoebe Dynevor and Ayo Edebiri, Prince William told Mia McKenna-Bruce, the star of How To Have Sex who went on to win the Rising Star Award, that making the film appeared to be “a lot of fun”.

The ill-educated comment caused Edebiri to recoil and Dynevor to visibly grit her teeth. Inadvertently (and entirely avoidably) the Prince of Wales had buffooned his way to the heart of the film. Sex should be fun, enjoyable and something we can banter about. But too often, in ways big and small, this is not the case.

Set during what is meant to be, and in part is, a hedonistic rite of passage Greek holiday, How To Have Sex is an equally powerful, relatable and yes, funny, drama depicting a coming-of-age experience of McKenna-Bruce’s teenager character Tara, one that includes a sexual assault. In may the groundbreaking film won Cannes’ Un Certain Regard prize recognising young talent and encouraging daring works.

It’s a completely engrossing and visceral depiction of the overwhelming shitshow that the reality of being a teenage girl often is, especially in the Love Island generation.  Across four EDM soundtracked and neon lit days, pals Tara, Lara and Em race towards drinks they know they won’t stomach, wade into bodies of water they’re not dressed appropriately for, dodge reminders of the academic reality that awaits them at home, and navigate new realities they will be unable to ignore.

An establishing scene shows the trio splayed face down across a cheap tiled motel room, waking up to sun blaring, a signal they’ve missed the morning after the night before. “I immediately knew what that room smells like,” I tell the film's director Molly Manning Walker when we sat down to talk at The Hollywood cinema in Avondale, while she was in town for a preview screening at the New Zealand International Film Festival in August. “Sticky! Hot,” she says, laughing.

“There was this intention to make it like 24 hours. To make you feel like you’re not sure what time it is. The assault was originally set at night and I was like it’s kind of more interesting that it happens in the cold light of day,” she says. “It’s four days – but where are you? It doesn’t matter. With the music, and the sweat, we really tried to capture the reality of it.”

The dynamics of the girls’ friendship is itself a relatable tightrope walk, one both cemented and threatened by drunken bravado. Manning Walker says it’s reflective of her own teenage friendships. “We thought that was cool… It’s that perspective of life – of course you wouldn’t be that horrible, but at the time it’s all so complicated for no reason.

“Pretending to be sexually confident and asking, ‘why are you not as sexually confident as me?' when you actually have no fucking clue what is going on.” 

How To Have Sex is the feature length directorial debut of the 30-year-old Londoner who worked widely as a cinematographer previous to this. She served as director of photography on Scrapper, directed by Charlotte Regan, which won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance in 2023, and her commercial experience lists work for brands like Nike, Diesel, Gucci and Dior. 

This extensive on set experience has lent Manning Walker an easy confidence – a followed through belief in her creative abilities but also her ability to run her own set differently. Part of her quest is to better the film world in front of and behind the camera, with the ambition that her set, script and film could be a lot of fun while still being run respectfully. That you don’t need to sacrifice humour to handle difficult topics – provided they’re done sensitively and thoughtfully, and against a backdrop of education. 

The film draws upon Manning Walker’s personal experience of assault, but she tells me, “sadly, a lot of the cast did have experience with it” as well. 

“It was about guiding them through that realisation without traumatising them,” she reflects. “They're a bit older than they are in the film, around 24-ish. I was really keen that they were actors and not street cast 16-year-olds and there was a bit of a push to do that because with this topic – with acting drunk, with everything they have to go through – I think we need to protect them. Even just the environment we were going to shoot in. It was a big thing for me to make sure they had the tools to distance themselves from it.

The location, shot in Malia, a coastal town in Crete, afforded them some inbuilt levity; a playground to decompress. That was crucial because even when the topic is handled sensitively, there is an uneasy universality to murky early sexual experiences. The type in which our own complicity or victimhood can really only be recognised as such when re-examined with distance, judged against a wider frame of reference provided by later, healthier relationships.

In a pivotal scene, lead character Tara is taken under the wing of a group of older friends, seemingly around Manning Walker’s actual age. Their care provides both Tara and the audience with some much needed perspective, a reminder that things really do get much better and less intense when you’re just a bit older. “That's kind of where I am in my life now, it’s a nice reflection on it,” Manning Walker says.

In her eyes, a big part of the tumult of teenage sex – of all sex – comes not from how we’re talking about it, but rather that we’re not talking about it at all.

“I really want to talk about why we’re so ashamed around the topic. How can we teach young people how to have sex and not be ashamed about it? It doesn’t matter if you don’t know what you’re doing, it’s about two people having a good time,” she says.

“I was saying earlier, you teach your kid not to piss themselves, and there’s a certain level of shame there. Why don’t we teach people how you have sex? Female pleasure – why does no one talk about that?”

Shame is needlessly baked into so much of the conversation around sex. Before an early press screening, local distributors mentioned invites that used the film’s name in the subject line were intercepted by spam filters. When compiling this very article I gingerly asked my editor whether they thought search engines would derank the story for having ‘How To Have Sex’ in the URL. 

The uncertainty reflects the fact that we’re at a frustratingly sticky point in the long road to change – where attention fatigue has kicked in, and the nature of incremental progress towards proper societal transformation starts to feel like wading through chest high honey. 

“With #MeToo it was brought to the surface, but was it really dealt with? It’s like OK, all these women have been assaulted and everyone has a personal experience about it, but what are we doing about it?” says Manning Walker 

This chasm between awareness and day-to-day reality became especially evident when first shopping the film to backers. Initially The British Film Institute was hesitant to back the project, telling Manning Walker they were unsure such storylines were relevant anymore because sex education and cultural things like I May Destroy You had surely shifted the conversation

Taken aback, Manning Walker and her team conducted a series of focus groups with teenagers that centred on the rape scene. In contrast to what film funders perceived, “crazy shit was coming out their mouths. They’d be like ‘oh no that’s not an assault because she slept with him the night before’,” Manning Walker recounts. 

“How has it not got further than this?”

Hearing this, the BFI came onboard. There are other, small but readable signs that the honey is liquifying. It was recently announced that the Schools Consent Project will screen How To Have Sex in secondary schools across England and Wales, as part of lawyer-led workshops aimed at educating young people about sex and consent. In early February at Laneway Festival in Auckland, large screens around the site displayed the usual safety messages – make sure you drink enough water etc. But one told the crowd of largely young attendees, “It isn’t ‘just’ an arse grab. It’s sexual violence. Call your mates out and keep everyone safe. Take care of each other.”

Safety in numbers is something Manning Walker is trying to foster in the film industry too. Outside of film, football is one of her big loves. She’s a founding member of Babe City FC, a football club established with the intention of bringing women and non-binary industry members together as a way to counteract infamously difficult on-set environments. They champion inclusivity, kindness and respect on and off the pitch. 

“I set up Babe City after I was on a really hardcore set, the other DP is still having panic attacks from it. You commit everything when you’re on set: your family life, your relationships. I was handheld operating for 12 hours a day, continuous days with no lunch break, five day weeks, and I was broken by the end of it,” she recalls. 

“I realised I want to hang out with my old crew, my female crew that I used to have on set that brought me so much joy. I want to exercise and I want to have fun. It completely changed everything for me. A producer said to me, ‘I know when I see an orange [Babe City FC]  jumper or hat on set I'm in a good place. I’ve got a good crew!’” 

How To Have Sex is in NZ cinemas from March 7.

Sexual violence: Where to get help

• Rape Crisis 0800 88 33 00, click link for local helplines.
• Victim Support 0800 842 846.
• Safetalk text 4334, phone 0800 044 334 webchat safetotalk.nz or email support@safetotalk.nz.
• The Harbour Online support and information for people affected by sexual abuse.
• Women’s Refuge 0800 733 843
• Male Survivors Aotearoa Helplines across NZ, click to find out more (males only).
• If you or someone else is in immediate danger, call 111.