Extra Geography marks Molly Manners' feature debut.
The film follows two boarding-school best friends coursing through the pangs of growing-up.
It premiered in World Cinema Dramatic Competition at the Sundance Film Festival.
In Molly Manners’ utterly winsome debut Extra Geography, the painful rites of a deep friendship and its dissolution assume centre stage. Manners has a sharp eye and ear for shifting emotional cadences. She seizes on the tiniest flicker of envy and hurt sprouting between friends who thought themselves as inseparable. Set at an unspecified time in an English boarding school, Flic (Marni Duggan) and Minna (Galaxie Clear) are best friends who everything together. They set identical rhythms of moving through the school, down to the very act of swivelling their heads in class. One finishes off the other’s answers. A line of thought is shared and mutually completed. The delightful opening effortlessly establishes the duo’s intimacy, their absolute devotion to each other. They have their own private language though neither need it since they are always together.
Taking a leaf out of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the girls decide to foist their fancies on the first person they see. It turns out to be Miss Delavigne (Alice Englert), their reserved geography teacher. As both try to court her in a series of scenes darting between funny and awkward, auditioning for the school production of the same play thrums a slew of uncertain dynamics. Suddenly, boys, whom Flic and Minna had vowed to collectively shun, spark interest. The best friend equation shifts and fractures into a messy, chafing mix of disappointment and angst.
Premiering at the Sundance Film Festival, Extra Geography is so sublime it made me blush, grin and then crushed me. Its templates couldn’t be more familiar, but Manners has such a zingy voice everything feels fresh, all emotions and sensations practically pop off the screen. There’s so much hilarity, despair, confusion here teenage reality couldn’t have found a more buoyantly expressive champion than Manners. Adapting Rose Tremain’s eponymous 2007 short story, Extra Geography travels with gusto and wit into that definitive ache after an all-encompassing friendship has started to wilt away.
When does the rock-solid loyalty between best friends slowly paper off? How does such a relationship turn charmless, disillusioned? Miriam Battye’s screenplay charts these subtle transformations without devaluing or dismissing the deep love and care that once existed. Adolescence brings the churn of change and attraction, the lure of easy boredom. Those who seemed irreplaceable start to feel disposable. The heart cannot resist what looks more appetising and freshly exciting. Manners sizes up these fissures as they take root and upend the most enduring bond. She doesn’t right away go for big, overwrought, sweeping moments of split. It’s a gradual process of veering in that direction, the heart frosting over with each thoughtless snub and calculated jab.
For a long time, the friends still pretend everything is alright, their equation still intact. There’s denial and ego stiffening. At what point does the holding on become delusional, emotionally draining? It’s a tender, thorny phase, with sadness and guilt creeping through ice. Manners handles this with candour and just the right dose of elegiac edge. She concentrates the world in on the two girls like nothing else matters. So, when the spell does break, betrayal glazes in, the heartbreak is immense. Duggan is especially shattering in the latter stretches as her Flic experiences rejection and having to chart her own path. It almost seems she relied too heavily on the friendship. Flic postures to be unaffected but her defences soon wither. Their toss at being “worldly”, as the project’s impetus, shades into something irreparably sadder, essential to coming of age. Joe Randall-Cutler’s editing zips through the mischief but also astutely and sensitively segues into the darkening mood.
Witnessing distance rise and settle between the friends is such a resonant experience. Every beat is carefully etched, none dialled up for sentimentality but each embossed with stinging authenticity. Molly Manners’ Extra Geography is a big emotional wallop of a film that instantly captures your heart and never lets go. It’s a pleasure and privilege to jaunt through this tiny jewel. Look out for Manners. I suspect she’s here to stay and tell vibrant stories in her singular, cheeky way.
Debanjan Dhar is covering the 2026 Sundance Film Festival as part of the accredited press.
