How to Have Sex (2023)
Director: Molly Manning Walker
Screenwriter: Molly Manning Walker
Starring: Mia McKenna-Bruce, Enva Lewis, Lara Peake, Daisy Jelley, Laura Ambler, Shaun Thomas, Samuel Bottomley

Winner of the Un Certain Regard prize at Cannes 2023, How to Have Sex follows three 16-year-olds on a girls’ trip to Malia. Molly Manning Walker’s riveting directorial debut captures those formative teenage years, with a focus on female friendship and first sexual experiences, specifically around the subject of consent.

Best friends Tara (Mia McKenna-Bruce), Em (Enva Lewis) and Skye (Lara Peake) fully embrace their first taste of post-GCSE freedom, in a joyous bubble of drinking and partying. While the film navigates dark territory, it is also full of great humour, perfectly depicting the emotional rollercoaster of being a teenage girl and the messy silliness of Brits abroad.

But beneath the glittery, ecstatic haze of uninhibited freedom, Walker sustains a looming sense of something sinister, and this darker area is explored later in the film.

How to Have Sex expertly captures the experience of being 16, transporting us into Tara’s position. The close-ups of her face reflect both euphoria and overwhelm, as she navigates exciting but daunting untrodden territory. Thrust into an ultra-sexualized world where men receive blowjobs onstage at nightclubs and prizes are awarded for sexual conquests, the party island is a sensory overload. These close-ups are most poignantly used during moments of sexual intimacy, conveying Tara’s emotional experience, rather than the physical act itself.

The presentation of female sexuality is a stark contrast to films like Harmony Korine’s Spring Breakers; the voyeuristic gaze of his camera constantly leering over the teenage girls’ half-naked bodies. Thankfully, the male gaze is purposefully absent in Walker’s film, and in the wrong hands, such intimate scenes might have been handled far less sensitively.

Molly Manning Walker’s film highlights the pressure to have sex; whether that pressure is from society, friends, or the pressure we put on ourselves. As the more sexually experienced Skye tells Tara, “if you don’t get laid on this holiday, you never will”. The film demonstrates how losing one’s virginity can be seen as a goal to be achieved, no matter what the potential cost.

Walker discussed her intention behind the film’s theme in an interview with Miranda Sawyer for The Guardian. “For me, consent has become too black and white in terms of ‘she said yes, so it’s fine’…that doesn’t always work – it’s not enough”. The film does a great job of exploring the nuances of consent, rather than a binary presentation, particularly the subtleties of external pressures and coercion. Walker avoids blaming men alone, explaining in the same interview: “not taking away all blame or guilt, but I know that it’s not all their fault… it’s the way that society has brought them up”.

Walker’s personal experience heavily influenced the film, drawing on her own wild teenage holidays, as well as a sexual assault at the age of 16. “Some of these holidays are still the best memories of my life, but there are other complicated memories within them”, she told Woman’s Hour. The film importantly acknowledges that a traumatic event does not need to eradicate the joyful ones, nor define someone as a “victim”. Walker added that “as a British society we love to not talk about things”. She hopes to take the film to schools, in order to open up important conversations about consent.

While everyone’s first sexual encounter is different, the film manages to speak to a universal female experience that is painfully relatable. Mia McKenna-Bruce’s captivating lead performance and the film’s urgent message makes How to Have Sex a total must-see.

Score: 22/24

Written by Gala Woolley

You can support Gala Woolley in the following places:

Twitter – @GalaWoolley
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Prisoners (2013)
Director: Denis Villeneuve
Screenwriter: Aaron Guzikowski
Starring: Hugh Jackman, Jake Gyllenhaal, Viola Davis, Melissa Leo, Maria Bello, Terrence Howard, Paul Dano

Denis Villeneuve’s taut and gripping 2013 thriller Prisoners follows several characters in the aftermath of any parent’s worst nightmare: child abduction. When two young girls go missing on Thanksgiving, desperate father Keller Dover (Hugh Jackman) enlists the help of Detective Loki (Jake Gyllenhaal). After the prime suspect is released due to a lack of evidence, Loki is forced to take matters into his own hands, as the film explores how far humankind will go to protect the ones we love.

Hugh Jackman is utterly convincing as a despairing father, driven to the edge by an unforgivable act of evil. We feel his sense of urgency and utter desperation as he races against the clock to find his daughter and her friend. Gyllenhaal is great as a ruthless police detective, his own concealed rage simmering beneath a facial twitch, which grows more pronounced with frustration. He is scarily good at embodying anger behind a controlled façade, his carefully slicked-back hair falling loose during an explosive interrogation of a suspect.

Paul Dano is infuriating as the prime suspect who may or may not have information about the girls’ disappearance. Keller’s frustration at the man who clearly has learning difficulties is painfully palpable, as Dano’s Alex Jones refuses to offer any information despite the brutal violence he is subjected to.

Throughout the film, director Denis Villeneuve poses a thought-provoking question: can extreme violence ever be justified? During an interview at the Toronto International Film Festival, Villeneuve described Prisoners as “a movie dealing with fears and angers that we all have inside ourselves. It’s a moral conflict”. The film will likely divide viewers on how sympathetic a character Keller is, but his questionable interrogation methods clearly come from a place of desperation and grief. Villeneuve realistically and powerfully presents a range of reactions from the grieving families. From Jackman’s sheer rage, to the hopelessness and inertia of his wife (Maria Bello), Prisoners follows the director’s prior film Polytechnique (2009) in illustrating how there is no “correct” way to respond in the face of such tragedy.

The cinematography is perhaps the film’s most notable element, with the dark and oppressive lighting reflecting the bleakness of the subject matter. Iconic British director of photography Roger Deakins has since become a regular collaborator with Villeneuve, and his cinematography for this film received a well-deserved Oscar nomination. Jóhann Jóhannsson’s score is also essential in establishing the sombre mood, and punctuates the narrative with a weighty sense of dread and foreboding. Jóhannsson would go on to work with Villeneuve across subsequent releases Sicario and Arrival, earning BAFTA nominations for both.

The film’s labyrinthine plot is creatively reflected by the maze imagery throughout, and the story twists and turns throughout its 2-hours and 33 minutes with no dull moments. There are some truly chilling and heart-stopping sequences that remain impactful a decade on.

Prisoners marks Denis Villeneuve’s first English language film, previously receiving critical acclaim for his 2010 Middle Eastern drama, Incendies. He has now become a prominent figure in the modern sci-fi genre, making Blade Runner 2049 and Dune among others.

The way in which the film thought-provokingly tackles an impossible moral dilemma makes Prisoners a superior addition to the crime thriller genre. In keeping with the title, we are held captive throughout and remains in its grip long after the credits have rolled.

Score: 20/24

Written by Gala Woolley

You can support Gala Woolley in the following places:

Twitter – @GalaWoolley
Blog – screenqueens.co.uk

In 2022, our team and a number of established contributors have reviewed more than 110 films in total, covering everything from the most lucrative blockbusters to the year’s best horrors and biggest awards bait, rating more than a dozen of them as our equivalent of five stars. At The Film Magazine we score each and every movie out of 24, as film was originally projected at 24 frames per second; the idea is for our scores to represent how many frames, on average, are worth viewing. Our equivalent of five stars is therefore 21 out of 24 and above, and we list each of these in our Hall of Fame. The very best of those Hall of Fame films, rated 22 out of 24 and above, have made this list of the 10 Highest-Scoring Films 2022.

If you’re interested in revisiting which films were most highly thought of in previous years, please take a look at our lists from 2021 and 2020. In this year’s edition, we’ll be presenting each film in order of score and then organising them in alphabetical order.

Follow @thefilmagazine on Twitter.

1. Bodies Bodies Bodies – 22/24

“If you’re looking to poke fun at the kids or experience some top-notch ironic Twitter discourse, then this is a film that won’t disappoint. Although its horror elements do err on the side of caution, the comedy will leave you satisfied if the jump scares and blood-covered cast do not.” – Morgan Barr

Bodies Bodies Bodies Review

2. Everything Everywhere All at Once – 22/24

“Everything Everywhere All at Once cements Daniels as one of the filmmaking partnerships to watch, the directorial duo equally imaginative, technically accomplished and emotionally dialled in to what makes us humans tick.” – Sam Sewell-Peterson

Everything Everywhere All at Once Review

One Fine Morning (2022)
Director: Mia Hansen-Løve
Screenwriter: Mia Hansen-Løve
Starring: Léa Seydoux, Melvil Poupaud, Pascal Greggory, Camille Leban Martins

When asked about her inspiration for 2022 Cannes International Film Festival entry One Fine Morning, writer-director Mia Hansen-Løve said: “it came from my own observation of sometimes opposite things happening at the same time in one’s own life. Like a strange morning and at the same time a rebirth.”

One Fine Morning presents a realistic depiction of life and relationships, without a rose-tinted Hollywood lens. When Parisian single mother Sandra (Léa Seydoux) bumps into Clément (Melvil Poupaud), she discovers a side to herself that had been closed off since the death of her husband, five years previously. Their passionate love affair sparks a sexual re-awakening in Sandra, offering an outlet of happiness in a time of grief. Clément is sweet with Sandra’s young daughter Linn (Camille Leban Martins) as he initially slots into Sandra’s world. Linn is funny and charming as a child who knows yet doesn’t fully understand her mother’s new relationship with her school friend’s dad.

As with all relationships, it is not always straightforward, and Clément’s marriage inevitably exposes cracks in the lovers’ private bubble. The elation in Sandra’s face at receiving a message from him, and the pain at their goodbyes, reflects the volatility of love and human emotion. Meanwhile, Sandra cares for her father (Pascal Greggory) who has Benson’s syndrome, a neurodegenerative disease affecting both his sight and mental capacity. No longer able to live by himself, Sandra painfully watches him being moved from one care facility to another.

In an interview for Sight & Sound magazine, Hansen-Løve said that “there are films I want to write and the films that I have to write – these films chose me more than I chose them”. The director’s experience of her own father’s illness clearly influenced the film and adds to its realistic portrayal. Greggory plays Sandra’s father with the subtle pain of a man who knows his mind is deteriorating. He told the audience: “it was the first time in my actor’s life that I really lost myself in the character”.

There is a very powerful line when Sandra is sorting through her father’s library, and she tells her daughter that she feels closer to him with his books than at the hospital. “There is his envelope body, here is his soul”. It is so poetically moving, and relatable to many people who have loved someone with a similar illness. The body is simply the outer shell, and when their mind is gone it is the things they once loved which truly reflect who they are, or who they were, and how they might want to be remembered. As a philosopher, language was his life and passion, and so it follows that books more accurately reflect Sandra’s father than his physical presence does. They are his interiority.

The tone of One Fine Morning mirrors Sandra’s fluctuating emotions, frequently interspersing tragedy with moments of humour. One such example is a very funny and charming moment when Sandra and her friends pretend to their children that Santa has arrived – the children giggle in delight in the next room as their parents go to great lengths to create the magic of Christmas.

This juxtaposition is also reflected in the film’s aesthetic, which contrasts sombre care homes and hospitals with the vibrant beauty of a sunny Parisian morning. Like the transience of the seasons, Hansen- Løve contrasts the unpredictable ups and downs of life, and how both can unexpectedly happen at the same time. Hansen-Løve has shot almost all of her films in 35mm, and when asked on her decision to do so with One Fine Morning, explained: “I knew that I was going to shoot in places that were not the prettiest, maybe I thought it would give them more soul”.

During the Cannes Q&A, Léa Seydoux said “it was the first time that [she] had the opportunity to play a normal woman, someone the audience would relate to immediately”. From glamorous Bond girl to the star of Cronenberg’s latest body horror, One Fine Morning certainly feels like a refreshing change and demonstrates her versatility as an actor. Viewers can empathise with Sandra’s character, feeling both her passion and her grief during the most tumultuous time in her life.

One Fine Morning depicts a bittersweet transitional period in a woman’s life, and finding love when you least expect it. While the film is undoubtedly sad, it has an air of life-affirming hopefulness, that with endings come new beginnings.

Score: 22/24

Written by Gala Woolley

You can support Gala Woolley in the following places:

Twitter – @GalaWoolley
Blog – screenqueens.co.uk

In this Movie List from The Film Magazine, we’re counting down the most emotionally resonant, funny and important moments from Love Actually for these, the 10 Best Love Actually Moments.

Follow @thefilmagazine on Twitter.

10. Colin Goes to an American Bar

After deciding he is on the wrong continent for love, Colin Frissell (Kris Marshall) travels to America, because “any bar anywhere in America contains ten girls more beautiful and more likely to have sex with [him] than the whole of the United Kingdom”.

Sure enough, not one but three beautiful American women are charmed by his cute British accent and invite him to their place (after warning him that they only have one bed and no pyjamas).

Colin’s Christmas gets even merrier when they tell him that he hasn’t met their fourth housemate Harriet, and “she is the sexy one”.

9. So Much More Than a Bag

In a rush to buy an expensive gold necklace for the woman with whom he may or may not be having an affair, Harry (Alan Rickman) wants to grab it and go, but the shop assistant (Rowan Atkinson) has other plans when he agrees to have it gift wrapped.

After placing it in a box, he ties it with a bow before delicately wrapping it in cellophane. Rickman anxiously glances over his shoulder as Atkinson slides open a drawer to retrieve tiny, dried roses, which he sprinkles lovingly. Atkinson then meticulously crushes fresh lavender. An increasingly agitated Rickman urges the man to hurry, to which he agrees, before slowly attaching a large cinnamon stick with a ribbon. As Atkinson retrieves a pair of garden gloves to add some holly, an exasperated Rickman asks – “what else are you going to do? Dip it in yoghurt? Cover it in chocolate buttons?!” All the while, his wife Karen grows increasingly near.

Mouthpiece begins with Cassie receiving a call to tell her that her mother has died. Over the next 48 hours she struggles to come up with a eulogy, battling with conflicting emotions towards her mother and, even more so, with herself. The film movingly presents the complexities of grief, whilst also using the tragedy to explore the duality of womanhood and female consciousness.

In a Q&A with the female-led film charity Bird’s Eye View, Sadava explained the genesis of the film’s central idea: “Once we started writing, we realized there were so many complex layers inside of our brains, opposing voices and congruent voices but many, many voices, that we realized we needed to have more than one person playing one person, as opposed to each of us embodying a whole woman.” She added, “we started to explore how we could represent the many voices in one person’s head by having them have more than one body”.

The male gaze can be a central topic within a modern woman’s duality, and the film overtly addresses this throughout. When a man in the street catcalls Cassandra, one half of her responds angrily and tells him to “go fuck [him]self”, and the other smiles and thanks him. The moment presents the complex dichotomy of how we women react in these situations, but also how we feel we should react, and whether to be flattered or offended. It is a great example of everyday female objectification, and how perhaps part of us might enjoy the attention, whilst the other rejects it as harassment. These moments of conflicting responses so astutely highlight the voices that can war against each other in our minds.

Our emotional responses to events and situations can be multifaceted and often contradictory. Cassandra dissects the male gaze in a particularly poignant scene: “I imagine there are cameras, with men behind the cameras, spying on me. I imagined how I would look to them – a girl who doesn’t even know she’s being looked at”. This line examines film theorist Laura Mulvey’s idea that a woman’s purpose is her “to be looked-at-ness”, merely a passive object to the male voyeur. The flashes of light and sounds of a camera shutter as she looks at herself in the mirror poignantly emphasise this.

The duality of the female psyche is also explored through the gender roles we internalise from a young age. We see Cassandra’s mother reading her “Beauty and the Beast”. The two adult Cassandras sit in front of the scene and commentate on the story. One half of her is clearly unimpressed with the story’s misogynistic undertones: “OK, so a guy traps a girl in a cage and when he finally lets her out she throws herself at his feet in delight”. She highlights the damaging portrayal of female passivity and subservience: “if she just keeps loving and loving this asshole then he will stop abusing her, she’ll get her greatest and only aspiration which is marriage, and he’ll be magically transformed into a generous, respectful, non-rapey prince”. The other, responds defensively: “do you have to ruin everything? I liked being a princess OK?” I related strongly to this scene, and my own internal conflict with similar subjects. Some of my own favourite films, when closely examined, can be deeply problematic in their representation of women. I wrote an essay on the inherent sexism of James Bond films, but I absolutely loved playing a Bond girl at a Casino Royale event. Mouthpiece astutely presents these everyday internal dualities, and indicates that it is normal to have divided opinions about certain issues within your own mind. There is a simultaneous instinct to protect beloved childhood fairy tales, whilst also looking at them through a modern and feminist lens. Do these stories promote damaging gender stereotypes, or is it political correctness gone mad? Mouthpiece relatably presents how it is possible to think both at the same time.

Female sexuality can also be a divisive theme, as are the conflicting attitudes towards sexual behaviours. During a scene in which one Cassandra watches the other having sex, the collective Cassandra is self-critical of the noises she makes: “come on, where did you learn that? It sounds fake”. The scene is effectively a comment on performative femininity, and learned sexual behaviours (ie, those heard in porn). The Cassandras interchangeably swap positions, one becoming the observer, and the other the observed. They take turns to comment on the other, which creatively demonstrates our own critical voice and internal monologue.

Sometimes the Cassandras move in unison, perfectly choreographed on their tandem bicycle, or simply flopping into bed, and other times they separate and divide, powerfully embodying the fractured self. Upon hearing the news of her mother’s death, one Cassandra breaks down, crying and banging her head against the wall, while the other appears numb and silently stoic. When their brother arrives, one comforts him affectionately, and the other rolls her eyes and walks away, unable to cope with physical affection. There is a beautiful shot of the two women lying in the bath, limbs entangled and intertwined. It then suddenly cuts to them thrashing around and struggling to come up for air, a powerful visual metaphor for Cassandra’s inner turmoil.

The two Cassandras are interchangeable, and do not represent “good” and “bad”. Sadava noted the filmmakers’ frustration at certain film reviewers who tried to reduce them to a binary. But their creation of Cassandra’s divided self is far more complexly intelligent than the common “angel and devil” trope. Neither one is presented as being the “correct” version. “We defiantly declare that that’s not how our brains work – our brains work in a myriad of ways where it’s always switching and changing, and there’s no division of black and white.”

Writer and star Nostbakken composed all of the film’s music, which is performed entirely by herself and co-writer-turned-star Sadava. During the Q&A, Nostbakken described wanting to create “the unfiltered, unadulterated woman’s voice”. The purity of the unaccompanied vocals further emphasises the film’s overarching theme: the female voice. The melodies are both dissonant and harmonious, as are their female counterparts.

Mouthpiece originally presents one woman’s journey to find her voice (or voices). It is a profoundly moving insight into both grief and female identity.

Written by Gala Woolley

You can support Gala Woolley in the following places:

Twitter – @GalaWoolley
Blog – screenqueens.co.uk

Thelma & Louise is undoubtedly the film that marked my own feminist awakening, and 30 years on it remains iconic and revolutionary in its representation of women on screen. The ending to Thelma & Louise has been described by the American critic Marita Sturken as “both tragic and idealistic at the same time”, and the decision to have Thelma and Louise drive off the cliff in the film’s unforgettable conclusion has divided opinion. In my opinion, the film’s ending remains the most powerful final image in cinema history.

When describing the ending of Thelma & Louise, director Ridley Scott recalled that “it just seemed appropriate that they continue the journey”. The iconic final freeze-frame symbolises the two friends’ freedom, and by ending on them suspended in mid-air, the image immortalises the characters. As Scott suggests, if we each interpret the ending more figuratively than literally, the women do not die but carry on flying. Before they drive off, Thelma even tells Louise, “Let’s not get caught. Let’s keep going”.

The vast expanse of the Grand Canyon represents the pinnacle of Thelma and Louise’s trip. They have reached the highest points of their respective lives and, having transcended their former roles of housewife and waitress, there is nowhere else for them to go but up. As an iconic American landmark of natural beauty, the awe-inspiring canyon viewed against the sky symbolises the ascension of the two women and their literal flight powerfully symbolises their departure.

The conventional Hollywood happy ending invariably presents marriage as woman’s ultimate goal. The films of Walt Disney Animation demonstrate an ingrained insistence upon a ‘happy ending’ equating to living ‘happily ever after’ with a man. Film writer Edward Ross claims that “from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs to Beauty and the Beast and beyond, Disney has long characterised its female characters as damsels in need of rescue, for whom marriage is the ultimate goal”. As the first Disney animation, Snow White established the theme of the ‘marriage goal’, beginning a troubling trend that future Disney films would follow. One of the main songs in the film is “Someday My Prince Will Come”, and Snow White continually fantasises about how “then he will carry me away to his castle, where we will live happily ever after”. Snow White literally sits and waits for a romantic partner, dreaming about the day she will finally find happiness within the arms of a man. The film ends with her prince waking and rescuing her, before lifting her onto a white horse, essentially parodying the definition of a ‘fairy tale’, as the prince and princess ride off to a golden palace in the distance. There is literal narrative closure as we are shown the last page of a book that reads “and they lived happily ever after”.

Thelma & Louise is subversive not only in its refusal to conform to patriarchal conventions, but also in its lack of closure. Whereas conventional Hollywood endings encourage us to imagine a life beyond the image, as seen with Snow White and her prince, Thelma & Louise encourages us not to envisage what happens beyond the freeze-frame. With the final shot, we are left with a positive and uplifting image of Thelma and Louise flying through the sky. If their story ends when the film does, they do not die, but are immortalised in that moment, ascending from the world below.

Screenwriter Callie Khouri has since stated that “after all they had been through [she] didn’t want anything to be able to touch them”. By driving off the cliff, the pair escape the confines of the world. As Khouri intended, they are untouchable in their flight. Film critic Manohla Dargis suggests that the final destination of Thelma and Louise is ultimately irrelevant when compared to the strength of their friendship. Dargis contends that “no matter where their trip finally ends, Thelma and Louise have reinvented sisterhood for the American screen”. Again, this idea encourages each of us to not prioritise the coming deaths of the protagonists but to acknowledge the greater importance of the characters’ lives and friendship. The final gaze in the film is at each other, as they smile in mutual exhilaration.

The lyrics of Glenn Frey’s “Part of Me, Part of You” illustrate the essential message of the film, which is about friendship and loyalty. The line: “you and I will always be together, from this day on you’ll never walk alone”, evokes the inseparability of Thelma and Louise. Frey’s lines reflect the “tragic but idealistic” tone of the film referred to by Marita Sturken, as the women end their journey but achieve an unbreakable bond of friendship.

Though Thelma & Louise does not have a typical fairy tale ending, it draws on the ‘happy ending’ idea, albeit unconventionally by freeing its protagonists from patriarchal society. It is an adult fairy tale insofar as it eschews the naivety of the type of happy ending that involves marrying a prince. The refusal of the characters to submit to patriarchy within the narrative is simultaneously reflected in its unconventional ending.

With their deaths not being shown, the pair are effectively mythologised. American author Laura Shapiro describes the ending as being about “two women whose clasped hands are their most powerful weapon”. They are not violent in their final decision, but nor are they defeatist.

Thelma & Louise shatters expectations of a Hollywood happy ending. It diverges from the patriarchal definition, exchanging heteronormative union for liberation and platonic companionship. Scott’s protagonists pursue their own destinies and ultimately rescue themselves. Thelma & Louise is therefore subversive not only in its refusal to conform to patriarchal conventions, but also in its lack of closure, as its one final still image leaves us with an impossible ‘forever’.

Written by Gala Woolley

You can support Gala Woolley in the following places:

Twitter – @GalaWoolley
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