How to Have Sex
MUBI | Release Date: February 2, 2024 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
79
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 37 Critic Reviews
Positive:
35
Mixed:
2
Negative:
0
Watch Now
Stream On
Stream On

Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Original-CinKim HughesFeb 7, 2024
The title is titillating enough to grab young ears. Yet the story at its core — about three college-age British women looking for thrills on holiday in Crete but instead finding some hard truths — would surely prompt discussion about consent, optics, and forethought that should be happening everywhere all the time and not just among women. Read full review
100
RogerEbert.comPeyton RobinsonFeb 2, 2024
More than anything, “How to Have Sex” is masterful in showcasing the drive and apprehension of sexual coming of age. Read full review
100
The A.V. ClubMurtada ElfadlFeb 1, 2024
Manning Walker proves herself a natural filmmaker, trusting that she doesn’t need to explain everything. As a storyteller she’s comfortable in the gray areas. As a director she’s able to coax wonderful performances and give them enough space to feel lived in. Read full review
100
The Observer (UK)Wendy IdeNov 6, 2023
Here’s a cause for celebration for fans of British cinema: a feature debut that launches not one but two of the most promising talents to arrive in movie theatres for a long while. Read full review
100
The Irish TimesTara BradyNov 3, 2023
Youthful exuberance has seldom been so painful or compelling to watch. Read full review
90
Screen RantMae AbdulbakiFeb 15, 2024
It’s honest and willing to go to uncomfortable places without ever feeling exploitative. It’s a raw and real portrayal of how sexual assault can happen and the mental and emotional turmoil that comes after. Read full review
90
ColliderEmma KielyFeb 2, 2024
How to Have Sex is a fearless, uncomfortable, and mesmerizing watch from start to finish. Read full review
90
Los Angeles TimesJessica KiangFeb 2, 2024
The extraordinarily perceptive How to Have Sex pulls off many feats of daring: Nicolas Canniccioni’s alcopop-hangover photography, James Jacobs’ chemical club-anthem score, Mia McKenna-Bruce’s star-making central turn. But the most impressive is first-time writer-director Molly Manning Walker getting us not just to forgive her central triad their brash and brainless bravado, but to grieve for it when it’s gone. Read full review
88
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsFeb 8, 2024
Already, McKenna-Bruce can work wonders in terms of assured technique and complicated emotions and she’s magically right as Tara. Read full review
88
The Associated PressLindsey BahrJan 30, 2024
For all the freedom and exhibitionism and sexual liberation that might be projected on social media, teens are still teens and people are still people and things still happen, casually and in quietly catastrophic grey areas. These are truths that are conveyed powerfully in “How to Have Sex,” a stylish, assured and moving debut from writer-director Molly Manning Walker. Read full review
88
Slant MagazineClayton DillardJan 17, 2024
How to Have Sex winds up delivering on the promise of its title, as this is a truly instructive film about sexual politics, though a remarkable one for largely leaving emotions unresolved and relationships feeling messy. Read full review
86
PolygonOli WelshFeb 9, 2024
With a patient, compassionate, but penetrating gaze, How to Have Sex maps out the dangerous, murky territory of teenage sexuality and friendships. Read full review
83
The PlaylistRafaela Sales RossMay 22, 2023
By bringing to the screen a conversation painfully reserved to private spaces built upon the frail structures of shame and guilt without ever losing the type of loving lightness one can only get through unwavering support, Molly Manning-Walker confidently steps out of the gate right foot forward. Read full review
80
The IndependentClarisse LoughreyNov 10, 2023
What isn’t said in How to Have Sex, and what isn’t openly felt, is the stuff that really hurts. Read full review
80
CineVueJohn BleasdaleNov 8, 2023
This isn’t a film about sexual assault as a rare aberration, but about a culture which collectively diminishes any notion of consent and encourages a rush to experience. Read full review
80
NMEAlex FloodNov 3, 2023
Hope, then, is the film’s lasting message. Hope that it’ll spark much-needed conversations. But also hope that they won’t be so needed in the future. Read full review
80
Total FilmKate StablesNov 1, 2023
Refusing to become a cautionary tale, How to Have Sex explores the pitfalls as well as the pleasures of teen-holiday hook-ups; it also brings an admirably fresh, female POV to the subject of sexual consent. Read full review
80
EmpireSophie ButcherOct 30, 2023
As enthralling as it is important, How To Have Sex neatly depicts the joy and pain of teenage girlhood. A scrappy but impressive directorial debut — and a strong showcase of breakthrough British talent across the board. Read full review
80
SlashfilmLex BriscusoMay 23, 2023
The film, with its pulsating score and club-scape visuals, is only interested in showing its audience the truth about situations like the one that unfolds throughout the story — and Molly Manning Walker's first film feels like an expert, surefire debut as a result of the skill with which she (and the brilliant collaborators she surrounds herself with on and off-camera) elicits every subtle gut punch the movie has to offer.  Read full review
80
The Hollywood ReporterLovia GyarkyeMay 22, 2023
Manning Walker does a fine job building a sense of dread and shifting tone without losing the story’s momentum. Read full review
80
Screen DailyWendy IdeMay 22, 2023
The writing is sharp throughout: Manning Walker has an acute ear for teen vernacular and a sly sense of humour. But some of the film’s most powerful moments are wordless, playing out in tight shots of Mckenna Bruce’s face. Read full review
80
Vanity FairRichard LawsonMay 22, 2023
How to Have Sex is a vivid and heartbreaking depiction of what is caused by the willful, dehumanizing disregard of women. May its lesson be taken to heart by those who need to hear it most. Read full review
80
VarietyGuy LodgeMay 22, 2023
How to Have Sex resists much of the obvious confrontation and catharsis you’d expect in movies of this type, instead trading in the thwarted impulses and micro-reactions of real life, and it’s all the more devastating for it. Read full review
80
The TelegraphRobbie CollinMay 22, 2023
Manning Walker’s wily command of tone and glistening sweat and DayGlo visuals do make you pine to be young again for the first half hour or so of this. Read full review
80
The GuardianPeter BradshawMay 22, 2023
This is an interestingly unsentimental film, without the coming-of-age cliches, and one from which the three leads emerge stronger and happier than before. Read full review
78
Austin ChronicleRichard WhittakerFeb 2, 2024
After the inexplicable roars of applause for the ham-fisted Promising Young Woman, seeing first-time feature director Molly Manning Walker treat similar issues with so much more empathy and nuance makes How to Have Sex a disturbing if welcome addition to the conversation. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleFeb 15, 2024
The great strength and slight weakness of “How to Have Sex” is that it’s just like being there — except you might not want to be there. Read full review
75
LarsenOnFilmJosh LarsenFeb 15, 2024
Thanks in part to McKenna-Bruce’s performance, How to Have Sex never feels exploitative. She gives Tara a sharp emotional intelligence. Read full review
75
Washington PostAnn HornadayFeb 7, 2024
The direction and performances in “How to Have Sex” are so spontaneous and naturalistic that the film often plays like a slice-of-life documentary; it’s not necessarily a fully realized story, but as one chapter, it’s extraordinarily vivid. Read full review
70
New York Magazine (Vulture)Bilge EbiriFeb 2, 2024
If it feels somewhat hazy and unsatisfying as a story, that is perhaps by design. Its fragmented, elliptical style has the quality of a dark, fragile memory. Read full review
70
Rolling StoneDavid FearJan 30, 2024
That Walker knows how to handle such things without being sensationalistic, as well as tenderly sketching the tension and sensitivity that characterize female friendships at that age, is what keeps the film from being a boozy, sunburnt tragedy. Read full review
70
Little White LiesHannah StrongNov 1, 2023
This is an assured leap to feature filmmaking for Manning Walker with a strong visual identity and sense of place – yet also one that sharply depicts the grey areas in gender and sexual politics that one is forced to confront as a teenager, particularly as a teenage girl. Read full review
70
Paste MagazineKatarina DocalovichMay 23, 2023
The sexual politics are good, and the film is competently made, but aside from McKenna-Bruce’s performance, it’s a standard, morally direct tale about the dangers of toxic party culture. Read full review
67
The Film StageSavina PetkovaMay 23, 2023
British teens on holiday at a Greek resort means booze, booze, and more booze, but Molly Manning Walker’s debut film has the power to take these prosaic cultural archetypes (teenhood, virginity, youth drinking culture) and use them as tools to tell a poignant story about the ambivalences of growing up, female friendships, and consent. Read full review
67
IndieWireDavid EhrlichMay 22, 2023
Molly Manning Walker’s How to Have Sex folds a nuanced look at the pressures and permissiveness of teenage friendships inside a frustratingly didactic story about the vagaries of consent. Read full review
60
The New YorkerRichard BrodyFeb 1, 2024
The paradox is poignant: the movie is, at its best, so alive to its characters’ immediate experience that it’s all the more regrettable that we do not really know them at all. Read full review
50
The New York TimesManohla DargisFeb 1, 2024
Manning Walker sets the scene and stakes well enough, though after the millionth drink and shriek, whatever contact high you have is obliterated by a contact hangover. The largest problem, though, is that Manning Walker seems weirdly insensitive toward Tara, who endures a trauma that’s meant to say something about something — sex, consent, friendship — but mostly just gives the story some queasy heft. Read full review
More From This Movie

79 Critic Reviews

tbd User Reviews

Details & Credits|Trailers

Current Movie Releases
By MetascoreBy User Score
1 77 Project Hail Mary
2 75 Send Help
3 73 Hoppers
4 72 The Sheep Detectives
5 68 Crime 101
SEE ALL
Essential Links
New on Amazon Prime Video
New on Netflix
Coming Soon to DVD/Blu-ray
SEE ALL