“How to have sex” and Cannes films featuring sexual harassment are still endemic

On screen, what’s interesting is how effectively these various films show how deep the terrible collective blindness around consent runs—predators seemingly blissfully unaware of the traumatic effects of their behavior while their victims shrug off the behavior. from “normal” life.

Walker’s How to Have Sex follows three girls on vacation in Greece. One of the girls is a virgin, but almost all three expect her to go home having slept with a boy. Walker’s expertly crafted film makes it clear that she’s not sure about losing her virginity on the beach to a guy she loves less than her best mate, but rather than stop having sex, she almost gives in. Although this encounter is hard to watch, it can be compared to unfortunate teenage behavior – but the next night, when the girl rejects the boy’s advances, she sleepwalks as she wakes up ready for sex; then he gives in again. The horror comes not only from the plot, but from Walker’s matter-of-fact way of showing it as if it’s a rite of passage as he comes of age today, a feeling reinforced by his friends’ reactions when he finally tells them.

In Khan’s In Flames, the horror of predatory male behavior takes on a literal flavor, with a shocking twist towards the end. But before that, the men give quite a scare to its young heroine, Mariam, who has to navigate men posing indecently on the street and men who complain if she doesn’t add them as friends on social media, while she even has a rickshaw driver to help her. to get home after an accident derails his chivalry as he returns to his home the next morning. Life in Karachi is presented as one where there is little agency, as public spaces are dangerous for a girl to be out alone. Add to that her mother’s overly watchful gaze at home, born of fear for her daughter, and it’s clear that Mariam’s life is defined by the predatory behavior that surrounds her.

The most poignant rejection of predatory behavior is Hania’s docudrama Four Daughters, in which teenage girls accept the advances of their mother’s boyfriend knowing that there is no one to listen to them, especially not their mother and probably not the Tunisian authorities. and Libya. It’s clearly abuse, and it’s horrifying when one of his daughters says she accepted his behavior because she was “so happy to see the light in her mother’s eyes when she was with him.” It’s a terrible story of self-sacrifice and acceptance of abuse because the options for coping are very limited.

Meanwhile, in December Haynes stars Julianne Moore as a teacher who had a 24-year relationship with one of her students, whom she preyed on when she was 13. The film takes place 24 years later, and despite the fact that the teacher went to prison, the young man continued his relationship with her, married her and had a child with her. He does not see how coercive and abusive his wife’s behavior was.