‘How To Have Sex’ Review: Molly Manning Walker Makes Exceptional Directing Debut With Powerful Teen Drama – Cannes Film Festival
deadline.com“Why’s the world so tough? It’s like walking through meat in high heels.” This line comes from Alan Clarke’s 1987 TV movie Road, an adaptation of Jim Cartwright’s stage play, and it goes some way towards explaining the visceral and sensory experience that is Molly Manning Walker’s quite exceptional debut How to Have Sex.
In British cinema, working-class stories lost a major advocate when Clarke died soon after, in 1990, but Walker recovers some of that lost ground with her Cannes Film Festival Un Certain Regard entry, a subtle but powerful deconstruction of teenage dreams and desires that explores class and culture in a similarly human way.
Walker’s sterling work as a DP — notably in the upcoming Sundance London opener Scrapper — proved she certainly has an eye, but her feature debut proves she also has a very distinct and confident voice.
For a vague comparison, you might look to Lynne Ramsay’s vastly underrated 2002 film Morvern Callar, but Walker’s film takes us into its heroine’s mind in ways that are much more subtle and emotional.
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