Extra Geography

No film in recent memory has made me feel more relieved I'm no longer a schoolgirl than Extra Geography, the feature debut of Molly Manners. The British filmmaker serves up a barbed coming-of-age satire, diving into the choppy waters of female friendship and rivalry against the backdrop of a girls’ boarding school in Yorkshire.

There’s dry wit laced throughout Succession writer Miriam Battye's script, as the adolescent bond of best friends Minna (Galaxie Clear) and Flic (Marni Duggan) is tested by anxiety, ego and jealousy over the course of a school year. Theirs is a toxic codependency: they eat, sleep and breathe together, share the same likes, dislikes and life goals. 

A glimpse of a Nokia 3210, minimalist threads and needle drops from Shanks & Bigfoot and Belle and Sebastian suggest a 1999-early 2000s setting, with pops of bright colour, tight camerawork and intimate two-shots encapsulating the immature echo chamber Minna and Flic inhabit. There might be a nod to Heathers with a recurring sex survey joke, but it's an angsty realm akin to Ghost World, with both newcomers Clear and Duggan proving just as compelling a duo as Thora Birch and Scarlett Johansson.

The two are introduced ferociously in tandem, on the playing field, but are soon talking in deadpan hyperbole. They think they'll die if they don't get into Oxbridge, or become ‘destitute whores’ if they end up dropping out of uni. A few breaths later, they're claiming ‘they're not like other girls’ and dirtying their match-battered knees to remind their classmates of just how good at lacrosse they are. 

No recent film has made me feel more relieved I’m no longer a schoolgirl

Their unapologetic self-centredness is amusingly naive, but soon the fissures in their friendship begin to form after they both audition for the co-production of A Midsummer Night's Dream with the boys' school. Minna flubs the audition but gets cast as Queen Titania; Flic performs better but is relegated to the non-role of ‘Tree/Mound’. It's an awkward result, made more excruciating by Minna's indelicate responses, which serve as a propulsive catalyst for their seemingly impenetrable bubble to burst, where unwavering devotion morphs into cruel contention.

Duggan captures the palpable insecurity and resentment of a brown-haired scholarship student who doesn't feel quite as beautiful, quite as smart, quite as charming with the boys as her rich blonde BFF. ‘Do things just sound better coming out of your mouth?’ Flic rages while punching bread dough. ‘Do I have a shit mouth?’ Clear is a deliciously assertive foil, whose competitiveness is icily unmasked once their separate mission to become ‘worldly’ – by falling in love with their unassuming Kiwi geography teacher Miss Delavigne (Alice Englert) – goes awry in the final act.

In Rose Tremain’s brilliant 2007 short story on which the film is based, the girls project romanticised colonial fantasies of New Zealand onto their part-Māori teacher, underscoring the ignorance of youth and the melancholy of displacement. It’s a shame the film avoids that rockier thematic landscape and firmly settles in the land of teenage kicks.

Extra Geography plots a safer route, but it’s a road worth taking.

In UK and Ireland cinemas Oct 2.