Sundance 2024: “How to Have Sex,” “In the Summers”

Two very different coming-of-age stories centered on young women offered sharp observations on how women navigate a male-dominated society and how often their bodies can become casualties of their struggles. Read more about How to Have Sex and In the Summers below:

How to Have Sex

Three young British women waiting on the results of their A-levels blow off steam with a trip to Malia, a city overrun by similarly young people for their version of spring break. Tara (Mia McKenna-Bruce) is the only virgin among them, and she feels pressure to be as sexually accomplished as her friends Skye and Em. How to Have Sex seems to start off as a raunchy sex comedy with the three friends looking for escape through indulgence in alcohol, drugs and sex. But soon, it becomes clear that Tara is not entirely sure she wants to lose her virginity, especially with Paddy (Samuel Bottomley), the boy that people around her are pushing her towards. Tara does eventually have sex (it happens relatively early in the film), but it quickly becomes non-consensual and brutal. 

How to Have Sex sharply navigates the complexities that young women face when it comes to sex – how they are pressured to lose their virginity even in uncomfortable circumstances, how safety is often secondary to being seen as “cool,” and how enthusiastic, verbal consent is not as valued as it should be. The film does all this by providing an intimate portrait of Tara dealing with the trauma of the assault, whether it is partying with complete strangers or disassociating in the middle of parties. McKenna-Bruce is excellent at walking a delicate line between bravado and fragility. She is introduced as the most confident and ribald of the young women, but over time, her fragility pokes through after the trauma of her assault starts to have its effect. 

Director Molly Manning Walker has talked about how she has shared this film in classrooms around England to raise awareness of how often women are the victims of sexual assault and are often too afraid to confide in anyone as to what has happened to them. While How to Have Sex is certainly informative in that aspect, it is a non-didactic very sympathetic and clear-eyed portrayal of an all too common crime.

In the Summers

Two sisters, Eva and Violeta, spend summers with their father, Vicente, in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Both girls adore their father in different ways, Eva (played as an adult by Sasha Calle) is more openly affectionate and seeks out his love constantly while Violeta (played as an adult by Lio Mehiel) seeks to impress him with her academic prowess. Vicente (Rene Perez) is an intelligent man who clearly loves his daughters, but he also has a temper and is prone to reckless behavior, which is often exacerbated by alcohol. In the Summers takes place over four summers throughout the girls’ lives until their adulthood. Director Alessandra Lacorazza Samudio puts her viewers in the middle of the action with the girls, as if we were friends tagging along with them. This approach allows us to learn more about Vicente at the same time that the girls do. Perez as Vicente has a magnetic charm that still has an air of patriarchal authoritativeness about it. It is when this authoritativeness manifests in chaotic, unpredictable ways that we realize just how fragile this family is, such as when he drives with no regard for traffic or the girls’ safety just for laughs.

The two girls also have their own arcs such as Violeta exploring her queerness and Eva seeking to find her identity outside of her father’s approval and also navigating very male environments, such as a house party, even when she is just entering puberty. Samudio refrains from hand-holding and gives her viewers just enough of each story so that we can speculate on what each character’s life is like outside of the summers depicted. We also see stories pan out in unexpected ways and even see moments of happiness during times of general discontent for each of them. Las Cruces also has a personality as a rare Latino enclave in a rural area, which allows the girls to be more themselves even though neither of them speaks more than a word or two of Spanish. It becomes a place of escape but also of confrontation for what each character struggles with. In the Summers won the Dramatic Grand Jury Prize at Sundance Film Festival, which is no surprise considering how skilled the film shows empathy yet clear-eyed discernment for its characters.