In How to Make Love Written and directed Molly’s performance is crucial Manning Walker said it became an “important part” of the film’s casting process. “It’s like, ‘Get drunk!’—you can see it right away,” she explains. Walker was told that, after years of working as a cinematographer (the recent Sundance bowScrapper) and making short films for her first directing career, a key approach was to “pretend you’re not Drunk, and you’re hiding it from everyone.”
In the first few scenes, it’s clear why this is a key element. Premiering in Competition at 250 Cannes Un Certain Regard, the film follows three British teenage girls as they live the unforgettable adventure of a lifetime in Maria, Greece. A summer holiday destination and party town, it’s notorious for its wild nightlife, especially among young Brits. Their holiday plans are relatively simple: party, splurge and hook up.
Featuring Mia McKenna-Bruce (most recently in Netflix’s Persuasion), Lara Peake (How to Talk to Girls at a Party), and newcomer Enva Lewis (from hopeful), the trio performed the ‘wasted’ segment with professional precision and were seen hilariously falling from clubs and bars and throwing up in the street , and staggered back to their hotel room, only to start again the next day.
Besides the actor’s apparent ability to appear drunk in front of the camera, there’s another approach that drama school probably doesn’t teach. “We also do this—we have it in all the shots—before every scene where they get drunk, we have them stand up and do a circle,” Walker said. As McKenna-Bruce joked: “Yeah, I think it’s kind of Stanislavsky.”
Wild party scene – actually Filmed in Maria (but dated, so the club is mostly local Greek extras, all of whom look like young Brits) – might divide the audience into those who want to drink hard alcohol with them and those who would rather be anywhere else. Much of the inspiration came from Walker’s own experiences, and she admits to taking many similar vacations as a teenager. “I’m a very different person,” she said. “Fake hair, false eyelashes, fake tan.”
Some scenes from How to Have Sex are from Recall those memories and determine whether they actually, in fact, happened (including one of the most eye-opening scenes in which two Brits compete to perform oral sex on stage in front of hundreds of drunken cheering partygoers). “I met a group of friends and was like, ‘That did happen, right?’ Because it was kind of crazy.”
For all the chaos, there was a sense of looming The feeling that something unpleasant is ahead. When it finally arrives, the story takes a darker turn, one involving sexual consent and what exactly it means. Is saying “yes” enough? What if someone is visibly unhappy? “We want to talk subtly about the gray areas of attack,” Walker said. “For me it’s about sex education, especially for young people, and how no one talks about female pleasure – everyone talks about male pleasure.”
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