Extra Geography Review: A Hilarious Love Letter To Teenage Friendships

Sometimes we look at our teenage friendships with rose-tinted glasses. Molly Manners and Miriam Battye don’t. They see them exactly as they were: competitive, hierarchical, and simultaneously some of the great loves of our lives. There’s an intensity to these friendships that is only possible at this age. It’s beautiful, toxic, fleeting.

Set in an all-girls boarding school in the North of England, Extra Geography is a heartfelt coming-of-age comedy and a strong feature debut from director Molly Manners. Manners is a BAFTA-winning director best known for her work on the hit Netflix series One Day, clearly a master in the art of putting a lump in one’s throat. Extra Geography follows best friends Flic (Marni Duggan) and Minna (Galaxie Clear), a pair with bright futures ahead of them – and I’m talking about both the characters and their respective actresses here. The two have some of the best chemistry you’ll have seen all year as Oxbridge hopefuls searching for their “summer project”.

Lacrosse season has come to an end, and the girls have exhausted most other CV-enhancing hobbies, all of which they’ve excelled in. Their solution is found via a school production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream– this year’s summer project will be to fall in love. Inspired by the events of the play, Flic and Minna decide to close their eyes and fall in love with the next person they see. This just so happens to be their somewhat frumpy geography teacher, Mrs Delavigne (Alice Englert). Believing it will make them more “worldly”, the girls approach the task as they would an exam – intensely analysing romantic texts and forming a step-by-step plan. Given their academic and extracurricular successes, the pair assume they will be skilled at love, and that it will prove similarly easy to conquer. Things don’t quite pan out as they had hoped.

The politics of teenage girl friendship are more volatile than any national government, something the film has captured perfectly. There’s a constant switching of power dynamics as each friend is perceived to be “getting ahead” of the other; Minna gets a larger role in the play, and Flic impresses Mrs Delavigne with her geographical knowledge. The line between admiration and competition is constantly blurred, which Duggan and Clear embody flawlessly. The two actresses expertly garner both sympathy and spite, with Battye’s witty dialogue enabling them to flaunt their comedic timing.

Extra Geography situates these Lady Bird-esque complex friendships in a more stylised world, reminiscent of Wes Anderson’s Rushmore. This enhances the absurdity of the situations the girls find themselves in, whilst never mocking them – we all know how real these fears were at the time. The girls couldn’t care less about boys. That is until they actually meet some. Suddenly they’re thrust into the all-too-familiar teenage anxieties: will any boy ever want to kiss me? Will there ever be a boy who wants to kiss me? Do I love my friend or hate her or want to be her? Is it bad to have a hairy vag? Friendships are put to the test as the girls realise love may be the one thing they cannot share, and they begin to decipher who they are when not connected with each other.

This is a really special movie. Hilarious throughout, but the emotions will sneak up on you in the third act. Manners skillfully conveys the bittersweet nature of teenage girlhood with a distinct voice that I think we should look forward to hearing again in the future. If, like me, you attended an all-girls secondary school, be warned: your 15-year-old self might be in this film.

★★★★

In cinemas from October 2nd / Marni Duggan, Galaxie Clear, Alice Englert, Aoife Riddell / Dir: Molly Manners / Brock Media, Film4, BFI, Vertigo Releasing