Luis Martinez

Updated Thursday, March 14, 2024-9:27 p.m.

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The legitimate aspiration of every debutante is to found a universe.

As Dreyer said, it's about seeing the world for the first time and, since we make the effort, forever.

It is true that as an aspiration and even self-demand it can be excessive.

Even arrogant.

And, in fact, there is a risk of ending up confusing the new with the novelty.

And it's not the same.

The truly new does not emerge from nothing but, on the contrary, maintains a tense and not always peaceful relationship with the past.

The new refutes the old because it debates with him, questions him and is even scandalized by his worn cuffs, his incipient baldness and, worst of all, his habit of breathing hard.

The old breathes hard because he becomes absorbed and loses his vital relationship with what surrounds him in general and with the air in particular, it is like that.

But what is really important is that what is new, unlike novelty, is not for sale.

The new has value in itself because it refuses to be priced.

'How to have sex'

is a radically new film.

And it is because its director, Molly Manning Walker, looks at adolescence and refuses to buy even one of the commonplaces that adorn it.

What's more, she turns the very meaning of adolescence on its head.

It has already been said: she looks at herself for the first time and, while we are at it, forever.

We tend to think that adolescence is a stage of life.

We do it perhaps to not suffer so much, to convince ourselves that everything, including our own life, is temporary.

But, and we're sorry to give such bad news, no.

Molly Manning Walker, director of photography before debuting director, firmly believes that

this uncertain age between unconsciousness and maturity is consubstantial with the very fact of being alive.

Exactly the same as before him he maintained people as diverse as Hesse, Twain or Salinger.

Adolescence is, to understand ourselves, a way of being in the world.

Not necessarily good or stable, but definitive and, above all, radically new.

We have arrived.

How to Have Sex

tells the story of three British teenagers who go on holiday for what one is supposed to go on holiday when they are a teenager and British.

And it's not necessarily what they're thinking.

The grace and miracle of the film consists of placing the viewer in a place that is as recognizable as it is perhaps easy, even comfortable.

And so immediately and without a break in continuity, turn everything around.

Where we imagined endless nights of partying, alcohol and sex, we discovered, in fact,

partying, alcohol and sex, but with meaning,

with the harsh virtue of the true, the raw and the new, not, be careful, of the novelty.

Each of the initiation rites that adolescents are supposed to indulge in are described from a position that surprises, alerts and, most importantly, hurts.

There are few teenage films so exciting, so tender, so alive.

Suddenly, consent is not what we were told, not the first fuck, not the first drunk, not even adolescence itself.

'How to have sex'

is an insolent film and, we have already said, completely new.

It is a film that breathes, but softly and very deeply.

If we add to all that the discovery of an actress like

Mia McKenna-Bruce,

there is no choice but to give up.

--

Director

: Molly Manning Walker.

Starring

: Mia McKenna-Bruce, Samuel Bottomley, Lara Peake, Enva Lewis, Daisy Jelley.

Duration

: 91 minutes.

Nationality

: United Kingdom.