Molly Manners Film Shines with Original Wit

Female friendships demand something a little extra. As that famous America Ferrera monologue in “Barbie” reminded us, it’s tough to be a woman — or, in the case of the two off-kilter leads of the uniquely witty “,” to be in that transitional and equally contradictory period known as girlhood. On top of the burdens you’re born into, how do you simultaneously navigate schoolwork, peer drama, the many mysteries of your budding sexuality, and the unknowable land of boys while also trying to stay loyal to your friendships and be true to your own identity? And on that note, have you figured out who you are yet?

Based on Rose Tremain’s dreamlike 2007 short story with the same name, Molly Manners’ debut feature “Extra Geography” (adapted by “Succession” scribe Miriam Battye) conquers these treacherous coming-of-age waters with a prose so sharp-tongued, timelessly wise and funny that this Gen-Xer felt as if it arrived to fill a cinematic void in her own teen-hood retroactively, just like other comparable movies this side of “Ghost World.” In that, the first quarter of the 21^st century has indeed been good to movies about female friendships, with “Extra Geography” joining the ranks of instant greats like “Lady Bird,” “Booksmart” and “Frances Ha.”

Then again, the proudly British text and aesthetics of Manners and Battye’s “Extra Geography” charts its own fresh territory, like a contemporary Jane Austen novel unfolding within the walls of an English school. Stylistically in step with Tremain’s nostalgic tale, it’s rooted in the palpable pains of youth, while hovering slightly above the realities of everyday life like a cheeky fantasy. At the film’s center are the lovably gruff duo Flic and Minna, played with precision and stiff-upper-lipped hilarity by newcomers Marni Duggan and Galaxie Clear respectively. Accompanied by a range of tunes — from a touch of Boccherini to the likes of “Crimson and Clover” that accentuates the story’s timeless qualities (“Extra Geography” doesn’t spell out the period it’s set in) — Flic and Minna keep busy enough at their boarding school by playing lacrosse, moving across the property’s expansive grounds with an air of snide untouchability and bickering about the future, almost exclusively with one another. “What will happen if we don’t get into Oxbridge?,” Minna wonders right at the start, while the two pick on their perennially bruised knees. “Maybe we’ll just die,” Flic suggests.

And there you have it — the risks always seem that intense during one’s youth when every little triumph or mistake lands like a life-or-death situation. Caught in these currents, the amusingly terse Minna and Flic decide that it isn’t enough to just go to a good school and get good grades. In order to really thrive in the future, they also need to become “worldly.” And you can’t possibly be worldly unless you give yourself a little taste of Shakespeare no matter how “rubbish” he might be, and fall in love with someone. Excited about their plan, the duo auditions for an upcoming production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” and choose an unlikely school project on the side: fall in love with the first person that they’d come across.

The first part of the plan doesn’t quite work out when the casting gets announced with Minna landing the role of Titania the Queen of Fairies, and Flic, a lowly tree. As for the second part, the girls set their sights on their geography teacher Miss Delavigne (a wonderfully nervy Alice Englert). They check out romantic books from the library, study up the intricacies of courtship, and try to score an invitation to their teacher’s cottage to advance their plan. Except, when the rehearsals start in earnest and boys enter the duo’s orbit in after-school adventures, their already off-balance dual existence and sneaky one-upmanship worsens. Will Minna and Flic maintain their best-friend status against the odds?

Exploring an eager case of codependency, and later on, a heartbreaking instance of growing apart, a film like this requires utmost chemistry between the co-leads, an occasion Duggan and Clear rise to with ease. Establishing a rare closeness of the finishing-each-other’s-sentences kind, the duo truly embrace the immersive feeling of being one half of that singular, irreplaceably defining friendship of the teen years, one that often feels like a high-stakes romantic entanglement.

Throughout the movie chaptered like a stage play, Manners captures the two actresses’ rhythms organically with an insightful and mischievously British sense of humor. Her perceptive lensing is especially poignant across wordless scenes where the two girls romance their teacher through longing gazes. (It’s also quite funny when Minna involuntarily makes a “longing” sound while reading about love, to Flic’s astonishment.) When they finally receive that coveted invitation to Miss Delavigne’s home with the pretense of researching their teacher’s motherland New Zealand, Manners follows the trio through a vigilant sense of awe and restraint, without ever sensationalizing the shocking occurrence that follows. 

“I’m stressed about everything and I don’t even know what any of it is,” Flic says early on in this infinitely quotable film that feels like a new high-school movie classic. In a way, her words also sum up what’s so wonderful about the searching spirit of “Extra Geography,” a film that mines reserves of tenderness in young female angst and cluelessness with loving empathy.