How to Have Sex is a deeply uncomfortable film. Remember when this was you? The crinkle crisps and bottles of vodka that you could convince yourself would work as breakfast, lunch, and dinner for the next four days. The colour palette is awash with nostalgia; the film shimmers with luscious pinks and oranges, reminiscent of your first foray into sun-bathed freedom. Blurry camera work and light-bathed montages capture the kind of binge-drinking you could only ever have hacked at sixteen.
Though their fears about their futures and apprehensiveness about their forthcoming results linger in the background, they are mostly concerned with who will be the most successful in their four-day shagfest.
As she sits awkwardly bundled up on the sun lounger, Tara is bombarded with messages of loud sexuality. Sheepishly, she watches the men and women of her resort interacting, avidly curious about these performances of flirtation.
The unshakeable feeling that something is wrong simply bubbles underneath the surface, as we watch Tara bottle up her emotions. How do I find someone to blame? Johanna catches up with her mother over the phone and I could have been eavesdropping, if things had been different. In Berlin I stutter, mit Sojamilch, bitte. When Thea came to England, she must have chewed on the words like rocks in her teeth spoken to her children like tourists.
Was English too soft a language to talk about what happened? She must have known, not to go looking for God in Germany. He was not there. She would not find him. I learn conjugations by rote and write verb tables with the words she used to pray with. An annual festivity held in summer by the members of a printing establishment. In Solingen there is a flowerbed where there used to be a synagogue. Anna Johns Johanna catches up with her mother over the phone and I could have been eavesdropping, if things had been different.
