There have been two scenes in Molly Manning Walker’s directorial debut Have Intercourse (which, as of this week, is streaming on Mubi) that I needed to watch by means of my fingers. The primary options Mia McKenna-Bruce’s character, Tara—a British teenage lady who rocks as much as the Greek celebration island of Malia along with her finest mates, Em and Skye, for a wild end-of-term vacation—on the seaside with Paddy, the lovable, inscrutable roommate of the lodge neighbor Tara had initially been crushing on. It’s late at evening, and when Paddy initiates intercourse, Tara doesn’t fairly say no, however her face all through the encounter seems extra akin to somebody receiving an invasive gynecological examination than somebody having consensual, actively desired intercourse.

The seaside scene is painful to look at, actually, but when I’d seen it after I was Tara’s age or near it, I seemingly wouldn’t have registered that something was presupposed to be amiss. Booze-fueled, passion-free hookups had been the secret for me and all my mates in school. It took till lengthy after commencement for me to develop sufficient sensitivity across the concern of sexual assault (or, extra to the purpose, sufficient consciousness to appreciate the shared DNA between what occurred to Tara and what I considered regular intercourse) to start wincing after I noticed graphic depictions of rape or sexual misconduct onscreen.

There’s no scarcity of this sort of content material in movie and TV historical past, from the Tarantino oeuvre to The Sopranos all the best way to Recreation of Thrones, and whereas I don’t assume sexual assault must be robotically off-limits, I do want movies like Have Intercourse—during which sexual assault is used onscreen to inform a selected, singular and needed story, one that really revolves across the emotional improvement of the character experiencing the assault—had been extra broadly thought of to be the norm. “What might be a typical, cut-and-dry take a look at sexual assault is as a substitute a nuanced, zoomed-out portrait of what number of elements, like peer stress and FOMO, can create an setting—and in a bigger scope, a tradition—the place assault turns into frequent,” Kerensa Cadenas wrote about Have Intercourse. Whereas watching Tara is acutely painful, it’s additionally carried out artfully sufficient to really feel significant. (One explicit shot of Tara strolling down a garbage-strewn road within the mild of day, nonetheless wearing her neon inexperienced party-girl ensemble, is troublesome to overlook.)

The second scene I needed to watch by means of my fingers in Have Intercourse would possibly look, to some, like a extra quote-unquote actual occasion of sexual assault, however in truth it doesn’t really feel solely separable from the seaside scene. In it, Paddy—who, at this level, clearly feels entitled to intercourse with Tara—assaults her whereas she’s sleeping, shortly earlier than two of their mates stroll in and soar into the mattress, searching for sleepy reduction from their hangovers. Watching McKenna-Bruce’s face toggle between shock, anger, ache, and a compelled veneer of calm is genuinely astounding (and cements the notion of the actor because the movie’s greatest breakout), but it surely’s simple to think about a less-gifted filmmaker than Walker truncating the onscreen second to save lots of the viewer discomfort. Discomfort, although, is the least of what survivors of sexual assault must endure from a society that has sort of grotesque curiosity in regards to the horror and gore of their trauma however not the disgrace and guilt that’s so usually part of the therapeutic course of. Who’re we, ultimately, to show away from Tara’s ache?