The fact that Red Sparrow is based on truth makes the school’s brutal training process all the more shocking. Within the walls of the school’s dilapidated mansion, recruits are forced to undergo a cold, depersonalized type of sexual training. In the book, Dominika learns techniques for pleasuring and exciting men through live demonstrations, and has to memorize hundreds of movements. She and her fellow recruits watch a couple having clinical sex, and listen to a professor giving a play-by-play of the action. Finally, one of book’s most shocking scenes is recreated in the movie — each of the students has to disrobe in front of the classroom.