Extra Geography (2026)

Extra Geography is not something I would have ever indulged. My experiences of geography as a school subject, for someone with no sense of direction and more interested in people than land, were not good. I did not like the Head of Geography. Although his wife, also a geography teacher, was surprisingly lovely to me when I played Anne of Green Gables in the school musical. Some red-headed solidarity – she gave me her first edition copy of the book, which still adorns my shelves.

However, as soon as I could I dropped the subject, which with the way the school had structured O-level options was incredibly difficult. It also meant I missed out on a residential school trip.

Interesting what a film title can evoke in terms of memories. The film itself even more so, as a girl who was a serial monogamist when it came to intense female friendships. Extra Geography is an English coming-of-age comedy set in the North of the country in an elite boarding school. Flic (Marnie Duggan) is a scholarship girl. Minna (Galaxie Clear) is a posh girl abandoned by her parents to the boarding school system. Both aware of the privilege and traditions of the school, but the weight of that landing differently on their shoulders.

The film is a simply told tale. It is based on a short story by Rose Tremain, a writer who specialises in the outsider. It is focussed almost entirely on the two girls, starting out with their determined symmetry, to be alike, to get it right in terms of being equal. They take a test. They finish early and together. They sleep next to each other, and devise life plans around ambitions and qualifications. Oxbridge is the goal, for both of them, together, always together. But Flic’s scholarship status is constantly referenced, because the English love the class system and how it defines us and our possibilities.

The two devise a summer project, a plan to fall in love. They determine what this must feel like by intimate attention to classical literature. A list of symptoms. A timetable of emotions. And their focus, is to be determined by chance, the moment they lift their eyes, the first thing they see.

The first thing they see is their New Zealand geography teacher, Miss Delavigne. The pair compete to get closer to her. A poor young woman, miles from home, uncertain of herself is pursued with dogged determination.

Slowly the layers of the friendship are peeled away. It doesn’t matter how hard Flic works, she is not a pretty blonde who can waltz into the part of Titania in Midsummer Night’s Dream. Instead, she is cast as a tree/mound. And boys – they ruin everything.

The symmetry had always been a lie. Because it is harder for some girls to just have fun. It is harder for some girls to get noticed. Heck, even their periods hadn’t really synched.

This is a story about that intensity of adolescence that can look so strange from the outside, but feels all encompassing from the inside. It is about envy and unfairness. It is a story that takes us from the practiced symmetry to the unfair asymmetry.

Because I dropped Geography I don’t have the necessary metaphors at hand to describe the film, but this is about the peaks and inevitable troughs of friendship. I loved the prickliness of the friendship, because it didn’t gush or become fluffy. Even at their most undignified, the girls retained a sense that they were worth something, even if the rest of the world was judging them differently.

A fabulous, intense short story of a film with engaging newcomers in the main roles and a light pop soundtrack that highlights the misplaced sense that school days are the best days of your life.

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Rachel Robbins | Vocal