Rescue of a drowned person – Weekend
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In theaters is “How to Have Sex,” a simple teen drama directed by 30-year-old debutante Molly Manning Walker. Amazingly, this film, which says nothing new about the problems of today’s teenagers or any other problems today, won the Un Certain Regard competition at the Cannes Film Festival.
Tara, Skye and Em have just passed their final exams and, in honor of the long-awaited release from school, decided to go to Crete for a weekend of buzzing so that the earth trembles. Crete is a popular destination among tourists from the British countryside. In a cheap hotel, which the friends chose as a place of temporary refuge, every room is occupied by their compatriots and peers. Everyone is determined to drink until they vomit and dance until they drop, and some also dream of losing their virginity. Tara is the most inexperienced of the trio, and therefore the most naive. Having met a group of equally reckless vacationers by the pool, she immediately manages to fall in love with their ringleader Paddy, a handsome and clearly dishonest guy, completely devoid of empathy. The first experience of fighting against sweaty hands happens late at night on a deserted beach. And although Paddy, before pulling off Tara’s panties, wonders whether she agrees or not, in general this intercourse of souls looks like a successful attempt at seduction. The first sex, to be honest, for most girls is meaningless and without orgasm. For many years, this procedure was looked at as an unpleasant rite of passage, something like – the sooner you lie down, the further you go over men’s heads. But after victories on the international front of the MeToo movement, the optics have finally changed, more and more young girls, to their credit, know: defloration should not be like rape.
In principle, both the conflict and the catharsis of this simple opening are exhausted by a couple of paragraphs from the school manual: do not allow, do not allow, do not agree, do not tolerate! Tara clearly did not hold this manual in her hands, as well as any other text printed on paper. The level of intellectual development of the film’s characters is frightening. Nothing is discussed in the frame except strong alcohol, cosmetic products and genitals. And this inarticulate mooing of the subjects can hardly be called a discussion. The portrait of the newest generation by director Walker, who is well acquainted with the topic of her research, came out, to put it mildly, uncomplimentary, but pitiful. Young people in “How to Have Sex” are like animals driven by basic instincts – ahead of them is the abyss of adult life, in which, obviously, there is no place for almost any of them. It doesn’t matter how poorly they study or just think, this planet is already terribly littered, already doomed, no one cares what will happen after the flood, what the children will get, because there are already kilometers of water above us. Drowning people are saved by anything – ranging from drugs to antidepressants, vaguely suspecting that they have already drowned. And if debutante Walker had concentrated on the epidemic of paranoid anxiety, which, alas, even newborns are infected with today, “How to Have Sex” would have had a chance to tell the viewer at least something important and real. But Walker, unfortunately, preferred the well-trodden rails to progressive agitation – the story of girlish naivety predictably mutates into the story of female strength. Of course, in the finale, Tara will find the meaning of life in sisterhood and gain rights in the gender struggle.
“How to Have Sex” is reminiscent of any film about teenagers who tried to break out of a declassed (both morally and financially) environment, and then, as expected, fell victim to their own youthful idealism. Lately, idealism, however, smacks of idiocy, but this annoying detail does not affect the outline of the plot. Best of all, probably, Andrea Arnold was able to understand and show teenage tossing in “Aquarium” and “American Honey” – the colorful texture in these films is no less than Walker’s, but there are no straightforward conclusions about the benefits of feminism as a universal master key to existence. Arnold, unlike her younger colleagues, had long ago guessed that no amount of instruction would change the reality in which all living beings are divided into predators and prey, into the strong and the weak, into those who are sure that nothing will happen to them for the suffering they have caused or the meanness they have committed. it won’t, no one will stop them or punish them, and everyone else.
“How to Have Sex” wants to give a clear answer to the fundamental question – how to live? On the agenda, however, are slightly less abstract dilemmas. For example, how to survive. Because there are more and more people around who have placed their bets on impunity.
In theaters from November 9
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