In November last year, the FT’s Associate Editor Stephen Bush encouraged readers of his daily political email to see the film How to Have Sex, which he called ‘a peerless film about friendships, relationships and consent’. It has been on my ‘to watch’ list ever since, and I’ve finally got around to streaming it.

The film follows three sixteen-year-old girls, played by Mia McKenna-Bruce, Lara Peake and Enva Lewis, as they go on a boozy holiday in the party town of Malia, Crete, with the express intention of engaging in casual sex. It’s hardly a spoiler to reveal that, at least for the central character played by Mia McKenna-Bruce, this intention is fulfilled—but that this leads to some complicated and often dark emotional places. The film is understated, and somehow both devastating and yet, by the end, weirdly uplifting.

This is a film that is observational rather than judgemental. The acting and cinematography are so astoundingly good that it feels at times indistinguishable from an artfully constructed observational documentary. All three of the female leads have the capacity to communicate profound shifts in emotional states with the slightest change of expression. They must surely all be on the road to becoming giant stars.

It’s a film which I think I could watch over again and see entirely different things within it. It’s also one of very few films I’ve seen where I’ve thought that the medium is essential: I can’t imagine this working as well as a novel, for example, the ambiguity of seeing events and emotions makes it.

I concur with Stephen Bush: this is peerless.