This film leaves me with very mixed feelings. For much of its first half, I was convinced that this was a superficial film about the spring break-type wild holiday that I don’t get the appeal of at all. But then when the main character Tara starts having doubts, I realized that it has a lot of psychological depth after all. As my wife explained, this may well be the most realistic portrayal of a young girl’s first experience of sex yet made. There’s a lot going on under the surface, Tara’s feelings, the actions of the boy, the reactions of her friends. This won the Un Certain Regard prize at Cannes and deservedly so.

Tara, Em, Skye celebrate the end of their school exams by heading to Malia, Greece for a holiday. They join many other British youths at a party resort and Tara, the only virgin of the three girls, is anxious to have a casual hook up with a guy. A boy, Badger, staying in the room next to theirs with his friends flirts with Tara and she shyly reciprocates. The two groups hang out and party together and Tara grows closer to Badger. Then one night Badger participates in a game in the swimming pool that involves multiple girls performing sex acts on him in public. Tara becomes upset and pulls away from the group. His friend Paddy catches up with her and takes her to the beach. He pressures her into having sex and she reluctantly gives in. Afterwards Paddy acts like it was nothing special and Tara is uncertain about how she feels. Instead of returning to the room with her friends, she meets with a group of strangers at another bar and spends the night at the villa. Em is worried about her being missing but Skye laughs it off as her just having fun on her own.

Spring breakers must be the most annoying, obnoxious type of tourists ever and I feel bad for all of the hospitality workers who must cater to them. I can understand how exciting and fun the party atmosphere can be but I fail to see the appeal of drinking so much alcohol that you vomit and then immediately recommence drinking again. I’m curious about how prevalent this rite of passage really is and I found myself disliking this film at first for its uncritical portrayal of this tradition and the seemingly shallow people who indulge in it. Yet director Molly Manning Walker proved to be more subtle and insightful than I thought. She never condemns the culture, after all if there are those who really enjoy the scene, more power to them. But she also suggests that many of the partying teenagers are still trying to find themselves and unsure of what they really want. Perhaps some are going along because it’s what that is expected of them. Perhaps they are pretending to enjoy it to fit in and hope that once they get into the groove, they will enjoy it for real. All this uncertainty is further wrapped up in doubts over their future and knowing who their real friends are.

Most of all, this film, as its title claims, is an extremely intelligent primer on the many layers of consent on the subject of sexual relations. Tara feels pressured to lose her virginity because it’s uncool to still be a virgin. She imagines herself to be fine with hooking up with just about anyone because that’s how it works with everyone. Yet when the time comes and she starts having feelings for Badger, she gets uncomfortable about casual sex but is unable to articulate it to anyone, even herself. When Badger goes off to party with other girls and is ambiguous about his relationship with her, she lets herself be talked into sex with Paddy even though that isn’t really what she wants. It shows that the question of consent is so much more complex than a simple yes/no question. Paddy is an asshole, but is he a rapist? The point is that both of them could do with better sexual education and adult guidance. A detail I like is that Skye too, ostensibly Tara’s friend, is complicit as she actively teases Tara about being virgin and eggs her about how good the sex was.

I don’t consider myself a prude but it’s shocking to me that the parents of 16-year-old girls would let them go on a trip like this by themselves where the object is basically to party as hard as they can. If anything, there is far less sex going on in this film than I would have expected and most of the partygoers the girls meet are actually decent people. I think the director wanted to emphasize that this party culture is fine if that’s what the participants are really into and it’s possible to both have fun and still treat one another respectfully. But it’s also fine to not be into the scene at all and prefer having a quiet evening with close friends. This film made a poor first impression on me because I was turned out by the vapid characters and what felt like a laudatory take on the spring break rite of passage. But Walker is a better director than I gave her credit for and this really is a very educational film on how to have sex for youths in their formative stages.