Lara Peak

The power of How to Have Sex stems from its canny contrasting of the fast-paced partygirl lifestyle of Tara and her friends against our slow, creeping realization of what has in fact happened to her. The film’s gut punch stems from the dignity that Manning Walker affords Tara in particular, who as an unambiguously messy, insecure young woman is precisely the kind of character that we don’t often see treated seriously in screen culture – this alone makes the film an important and refreshing experience.