How to Have Sex: Is the Movie Based on a True Story?

Molly Manning Walker’s directorial debut ‘How to Have Sex’ is a coming-of-age film that strives to spark a crucial conversation in culture around the nuances of consent in sexual encounters. It follows a wild, hedonist vacation that three teenage girls, Tara, Skye, and Em, undertake after finishing their high school GCSEs. On this trip to Crete’s party town, Malia, the young girls are excited for endless days of partying and drinking—and for Tara, maybe even losing her virginity.

However, even after the girls befriend another group of vacationers and Tara forms a tentative bond with the charming Badger, things end up taking an unpleasant turn. As the film follows a surreal rites-of-passage trip of three teenagers, it ends up capturing an unnerving yet unfortunately universal experience. As such, with themes of teenage sex, ambiguity, and consent at the forefront, the story presents a disarmingly authentic experience. Naturally, Tara’s realistic narrative remains fascinating in its origins.

How to Have Sex is a Fictitious Story That Stemmed From Molly Manning Walker’s Experiences

‘How to Have Sex’ presents a deeply profound film about a young woman’s experience with sex and consent while on a trip that is meant to bring her the time of her life. The tale itself is fictional, with no real-life counterparts directly inspiring its storytelling and characters. Nonetheless, once put under a critical eye, Tara and her experiences become overwhelmingly relatable and deeply rooted in reality. Filmmaker Molly Manning Walker, the director and screenwriter behind the project, was inspired by her own experiences and the reality she has observed of the current culture around sex. Initially, the idea came to her as a teenager after a bar crawl, during which she witnessed an instance of a man receiving oral sex on stage.

This became a formative memory for the filmmaker, who went on to gather more experiences and understanding around this particular realm of culture. Much like the teenagers on the screen, Manning Walker undertook numerous post-high school celebratory trips herself from the ages of 16-18. While she enjoyed these vacations and made memories for life, she also retained many bad experiences from that time in her life. Although, at the time, while swept up in youthful, partying spirits, the real gravity of these bad instances never settled on Manning Walker or her peers, she was able to scrutinize them better in her adulthood. Similarly, at the age of 16, the filmmaker was sexually assaulted on a night out in London.

“No one knows how to deal with sexual assault,” Manning Walker explained in a conversation with The Guardian. “Especially if you’re young because everyone just goes: ‘Fuck!’ and stops talking.” Therefore, with her debut film, the writer/director wanted to create something that spoke to an audience with genuine relatability. Thus, the story highlights how the context of a wild teenage vacation and party culture contributes to the complications of dubious consent and sexual assault. Yet, it never limits its narrative to its environment. By focusing on Tara’s case-specific experience and the unwitting participation of the seemingly innocent bystanders around her, ‘How to Have Sex’ urges the audience to undertake a crucial conversation about the reality of these real-life nuances.

The Film Explores a Pervasive Societal Issue

As ‘How to Have Sex’ tackles the complicated and sensitive topic revolving around consent in sexual scenarios, it doesn’t simply aim for reflection of real life. The film achieves this in leaps and does an effective job of recreating the intricacies around the issue with admirable efficiency. Yet, at its core, the story seeks to offer an educational and hopefully eye-opening reality to the audience. One of the key pillars that inform the foundation of Tara’s narrative comes from an actual disparity filmmaker Molly Manning Walker noticed in reality. In her experiences, every woman she knew had undergone some horrific instance of sexual assault. In comparison, not all men seemed to have the same experience either as victims or perpetrators.

This suggested a gap in the definition of assault that most people harbor. For the same reason, with Tara’s ambiguous and largely dubious on-screen experiences, Manning Walker wanted to challenge people to evaluate their understanding of consent and its real-life application. Furthermore, instead of focusing on the sheer violence and transgression of the act, the filmmaker intentionally focused on Tara’s exposure to it and its aftermath. As a result, the film has allowed broader space for conversations among men, in which they can evaluate their role in the prevalent complications around the issue. In fact, the film even collaborated with The School Consent Project, a UK-based charity organization that facilitates consent-focused sexual education workshops.

With this partnership, ‘How to Have Sex’ brought the conversation to classrooms, encouraging the youth to challenge their preconceived notions and become a more productive part of the conversation. Likewise, the project’s influence out in the world offered similar educational opportunities for the audience. One memorable instance emerged after a Cannes showing when an older man, speculated to be in his 70s, shared with Manning Walker that the film made him realize that he had been the Paddy in his past. Alternatively, numerous female viewers have found their experiences and realities reflected in Tara’s character. Thus, the film’s thought-provoking effect on people remains evident. The only reason it’s able to incite such moving reactions is because the genesis of the story comes from a place of reality and authenticity.