Two best friends at an English boarding school set themselves a goal of falling in love over the summer.
Review by Eric Hillis
Directed by: Molly Manners
Starring: Marni Duggan, Galaxie Clear, Alice Englert, Aoife Riddell
Friendships are rarely as intense as those you develop with your school classmates. But such relationships are usually built on the most superficial of foundations. When I think back to whom I was friends with in school, it was almost exclusively because they shared my taste in music. What a ridiculous basis for a relationship. But our taste was largely all we had at that age. We hadn't become people yet, we had no real life experience, and so we defined ourselves by the things that brought us pleasure. It was how we found our tribe.
Based on a short story by Rose Tremain, Molly Manners' feature directorial debut Extra Geography is centred on two 15-year-olds who aren't yet people but desperately wish to be. It's set in an English boarding school at some point just before cellphones became permanently glued to the hands of teenage girls. Flic (Marni Duggan) and Minna (Galaxie Clear) are best friends, practically joined at the hip. They are bright and well-read, but their cloistered existence means they have no experience of the real world. They have a desire to become "worldly," and in their minds the best way to become worldly is to fall in love. Trouble is, they aren't lesbians and their situation doesn't provide much opportunity to meet boys. Regardless, through a game of random chance, they select their Geography teacher Miss Delavigne (Alice Englert) as the unwitting object of their misguided affection. Neither of the girls find the frumpy and awkward Miss Delavigne attractive though. But that's not going to stop them from becoming worldly.
Much of the humour comes from Flic and Minna's coldly scientific approach to forcing themselves to fall in love with a random target. While they have a charismatic charm, they're also quite the pair of little creeps, and the way they discuss Miss Delevigne isn't a million miles away from how you imagine Leopold and Loeb might have spoken about their chosen victim. You could envision a darker twist on this story in which the two girls convince each other to commit a murder, and I couldn't shake off how much Flic and Minna reminded me of the teenage killers played by Kate Winslet and Melanie Lynskey in Peter Jackson's Heavenly Creatures.
But this is a comedy, and no such grisly path is treaded. The movie occasionally raises some heady issues but never loses sight of the endearing if foundationally brittle bond between its protagonists. Newcomers Duggan and Clear have a palpable chemistry, but we're left in little doubt that these two girls probably wouldn't have become friends were it not for being thrown together in the claustrophobic confines of a boarding school. There is a clear class distinction between Flic and Minna, the former a working class recipient of a scholarship while the latter is a middle class lass whose place at the institution was likely never in doubt. Flic seems to suffer from imposter syndrome, forcing herself to work that little bit harder while Minna has a laissez faire attitude to her school life.
A wedge is driven between Flic and Minna in the form of a school production of 'A Midsummer Night's Dream'. Minna gets the plum role of Titania while Flic has to settle for playing a mound of dirt. It also brings boys into the school, Flic growing increasingly jealous of Minna's budding interest in her male co-star. Ironically, it is encroaching worldliness that poses the biggest threat to Flic and Minna's friendship.
For a directorial debut headed by two young unknown actors, Extra Geography is stridently confident. The hormone-fuelled energy of its young protagonists is reflected in the film's restless camera moves and restive editing. As the story unfolds and Flic and Minna begin to grow apart, the film's rhythm slows down to create an air of melancholy. It all leads to a denouement that is as brutally honest as it is heartbreaking. We leave wondering what paths Flic and Minna might take in life, while also excited for the careers of the two prodigious talents who portrayed them so vividly.
Extra Geography is in UK/ROI cinemas from October 2nd.
