“How to have sex”, interview with Director Molly Manning Walker and actress Mia McKenna Bruce

October 21, 2023

Molly Manning Walker on How to have sex: "I wanted to write story about the pressure young people have on each other to have sex”

"How to have sex", interview with Director Molly Manning Walker and actress Mia McKenna Bruce Chiara Nicoletti

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After winning Best film in the Un Certain Regard section at the latest Cannes Film Festival, “How to have sex“ by Molly Manning Walker lands in Rome at Alice nella Città as the opening film.

The DOP turned director Walker presents the film with her protagonist, Mia McKenna Bruce, who plays Tara, a girl embarking on a summer trip after graduation with two friends and discovering the worst about adult life and sexual encounters.

“I wanted to write story about the pressure young people have on each other to have sex” explains Manning Walker as she tells us more about the summer trip she took with some friends and whose memories inspired the making of the film. Molly Manning Walker recalls an episode of her trip, in which she felt that the public sexual act she was assisting at, felt wrong and awkward but she didn’t call it so as she thought she was the only one to think it this way. Years after, she discovered that she and her friends were all experiencing that same kind of sexual pressure, the same one she depicted in How to have sex, adapting the story to nowadays teenagers.

The director explains how she had pictured Tara, the main character and how she found Mia McKenna Bruce, an actress capable of showing both the enthusiasm of being young and the trauma caused by a very wrong first encounter with sex and an abusive male figure.

Plot

Three British teenage girls go on a rites-of-passage holiday, drinking, clubbing and hooking up in what should be the best summer of their lives. As they dance their way across the sun-drenched streets of Malia, they find themselves navigating the complexities of sex, consent and self-discovery. Captured with luminous visuals and a pitch-perfect soundtrack, Manning Walker’s directorial debut paints a painfully familiar portrait of young adulthood, and how first sexual experiences should – or shouldn’t – play out.

Written by: Chiara Nicoletti

Alice nella Città Festa del Cinema di Roma Mia McKenna Bruce Molly Manning Walker