Trigger warning: this article discusses sexual assault.
Warning: spoilers for How To Have Sex ahead.
From Albert Square and Tracy Beaker's Dumping Ground to Cannes Film Festival, Mia McKenna-Bruce has been on quite the ride. After spending her youth on British TV screens with roles in EastEnders and Tracy Beaker Returns, she's shot to superstardom with coming-of-age girls holiday drama How To Have Sex.
The film – which received an eight-minute standing ovation and the Un Certain Regard award, one of the festival's biggest honours – follows protagonist Tara (played by Mia) and her two best friends (Lara Peake) and Em (Enva Lewis) as they embark on the “best holiday ever” on a post-GCSE trip to Malia. Yes, think glowsticks, fish bowls, sweaty clubs and all-around hedonism. But when they meet lads Badger and Paddy (played by Shaun Thomas and Samuel Bottomley respectively), the trip of a lifetime takes a darker path, encountering the pressures around virginity and sexuality.
Writer-director Molly Manning Walker’s mission with the film was to bridge the "gap in education” around consent, reframing how young women are introduced to sex and how to have more positive sexual experiences – and most of all, to shine a light on the amount of women encountering sexual assault, especially during a time of rite of passage like a girls holiday.
It stars I May Destroy You star Danielle Vitalis.
Mia was inspired to play Tara so she could bridge this gap in education for her 16-year-old sister. “She’s at that age of navigating who she’s becoming,” Mia explains to GLAMOUR. “And I remember how difficult that was, not knowing where to turn.” She points out that there are movies about sex for older people, but not as many for younger generations where your experiences are so formative. “If I’d had a film like this… I think that would have made my time a hell of a lot easier.”
During research for the film, it was discovered during focus groups with teen girls that younger generations still exhibit victim blaming narratives when talking about sexual assault. Molly described in an interview how they reacted to reading an assault scene. “They’d be like, ‘I don’t see any issues with this scene,’” she said, with one participant adding: ‘Girls have to wear better clothes. They have to protect themselves and not get drunk.’
The fact that these views are still being expressed by young girls, for Mia, “makes you realise how deeply ingrained these pressures from society are”. She’s insistent that the only way to “unlearn” these narratives is to “really start conversations”, which she feels that How To Have Sex has done. Mia adds she hopes that the success of the film means that more will be made like it, “breeding a safe space for people to talk about it”.
She filmed two separate sexual assault scenes with Samuel Bottomley as Paddy, and points to the amazing work of the film’s intimacy co-ordinator, who was working with the cast from rehearsal stages. “She was there every step of the way. The assault scenes were choreographed with such precision, so we knew exactly what we were doing when. So they were made as comfortable as they could be.”
Filming these scenes was “difficult for everyone” – for the entire cast and crew, and what helped was the closeness that was quickly formed on set. “It never felt like it was just me, we were genuinely all in it together,” Mia describes. “Obviously emotions are flying high all the time for the characters, so it was really important that we as a cast were super close.”
It was also important that How To Have Sex didn’t create a “blame game” in the dynamics of sexual harassment, due to the fact that this would shut people out of the conversation. “We didn’t want to make Paddy a monster, or Tara a victim,” Mia explains. “Because this is a story meant to resonate with lots of people. If you go to extremes or make it too graphic, it can shut people [and their experiences] out.”
More than that, men have spoken out about the relatability of the film, when it comes to different experiences of sex and harassment. “Guys have said that they see themselves in Tara,” she tells GLAMOUR. “That they haven't felt like they've been able to voice what they want, that genuine connection they want when they have sex for the first time.”
An older man was even found pacing outside a preview screening, admitting to director Molly that he had recognised he had “been a Paddy”. While Mia is proud that the film is serving as a catalyst for these conversations and realisations, she knows the message needs to be taken further, into schools and sex education classes – to stop these “Paddy” narratives from manifesting in young people’s minds.
“Molly was trying to get the film into schools, which is difficult because of the curriculum,” she explains, criticising the current sex education system for “not actually talking about anything human”.
“You can’t expect young people to just know these things. They need conversations like this to understand their feelings,” she says, adding that the problems start with the way we’ve been taught to view sex and connection. “It's not hard to look at another human and know if they're feeling comfortable or not,” she says “But because of the way that we have been taught, or not taught, we've searched for answers in other places. It's become very much one person versus the other when we just need to be good humans about it, talk and be more understanding of each other.”
One of the key messages of How To Have Sex, Mia says, is that “consent is not binary”. This is demonstrated during a sexual assault scene on the beach, where Tara says “no” to Paddy multiple times, but then eventually says “yes”. “Why was the yes taken as the final answer and the nos along the way, weren’t?” Mia asks, adding: “It goes beyond what you're physically saying. She's clearly very uncomfortable. There's more to consent than just words, it's the person as a whole.” She stresses that it was “hugely important” for these nuances to be shown on screen.
Though much of the film deals with these important, albeit dark, themes it also depicts the euphoria of the girls holiday and the irreplaceable love of female friendship, as well as its inevitable toxic competitive streaks. These themes resonated with Mia’s personal experiences, particularly the pressure to live up to each others’ expectations. “At that age, your world is so small,” she says. “You learn that you don’t have to knock down someone else’s tower to build your own – there’s space for everyone.”
It’s hard to talk about How To Have Sex without thinking about the #MeToo movement and the struggle for female voices to be heard in Hollywood, in front of and behind the camera. For Mia, she sees change happening not just in How To Have Sex being made – but the huge reception it’s received and conversations its started.
“Having that open dialogue is important, but we've still got a really long way to go,” she says. “People want change… they want these conversations.”
When it comes to her own empowerment, Mia tells GLAMOUR she finds it in her own conversations with women, citing the ethos of the film and becoming a new mum as reasons for this. “Recently it’s really resonated with me, just speaking freely with other women and realising we all have this camaraderie,” she says. “Walking out of those conversations, I feel so empowered.”
It’s a testament to the movement forward Hollywood that has taken that Mia has been able to seamlessly handle new motherhood – she welcomed her first child with actor Tom Leach earlier this year – with starring in a critically-acclaimed film without having her capabilities or time questioned.
“That was always a big fear of mine, growing up in the industry, [thinking] ‘how on earth do you make that work as as a mum as well?’ But the support has been incredible…” she said.
Mia isn’t sure what the future holds for her professionally, but feels more self-assured as she navigates motherhood. “For the first time ever, I’m not stressed about what’s next,” she says, hoping that she will be “telling stories that matter to people”. She has done this and more with How To Have Sex, with its impact having already reached far beyond the cast and crew’s wildest dreams.
“When we were making the film, it was very much like, ‘if one person can walk away and have a conversation with their mates, and it'd be positive for them, then we've done something good’. But there has been that tenfold.”
For Mia, the greatest reason that change will happen through films like How To Have Sex, though, is because it’s clear that people now want these changes to happen.
“There is a the need for change, but there's the want for it as well,” she says. “And having the want for it, I think is the thing that is very positive.”
How To Have Sex is available to watch in cinemas now.
