Minna and Flic are two bright boarding school girls who do everything together: They study the same subjects together, they play the same sports together, they read the same books at the same pace at the same time, together. They’re so in step that during their nightly bedside debriefs they apologize when one of them “got ahead of the other” that day.
When the precocious pair decide their best shot at leveling up into young adults is to learn about love, they scheme: Who can make their geography teacher fall in love with them first?
The caper leads them down different paths, as Minna begins to “get distracted,” as Flic puts it, with boys from the neighboring school who come through to rehearse for the upcoming co-ed production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” The friendship, once their entire world, begins to feel confining as the two experience the sensation of being out of step for the first time.
It’s the story of “Extra Geography,” directed by Molly Manners, and the film’s script, written by Miriam Battye, is based on a short story by English novelist Rose Tremain.
“I knew of Miriam’s work,” Manners said, “and I’d read the short story, and I thought it was just a very evocative story. Very bold, even though it was so short.”
When she heard that Miriam was adapting it, she asked her to send it when she had finished.
“And then when I read the script, I was like, Well, this is phenomenal,” Manners said. “It took me back to my own teenage years and made me think of all those early female friendships that are actually so formative in your life as a woman, at a point where you’re forming your worldview.”
The two leads — Marni Duggan and Galaxie Clear, Flic and Minna, respectively — said the way the characters were drawn also appealed to them, themselves young women.
“They’re allowed to be quite arrogant and odd, but they’re also — you root for them because they’re so charming in their own little way,” Duggan said. “Sometimes I think that’s quite lacking in films, and I think there’s a growing intrigue, especially for me, for roles for women like that.”
Clear agreed.
“I think sometimes women are villainized for having certain personality traits, such as being ambitious and being driven and doing whatever it takes to get where they need to and want to get. But I think in this film, it was celebrated, and we were allowed to have those traits,”she said.
That’s not to say Flic and Minna are necessarily heroes. In their quest to fall in love, the two are so focused that they leave behind them a trail of bruised relationships, including with the geography teacher, who becomes somewhat embroiled in the girls’ careless competition for self growth.
“They set this up as a sort of academic project to fall in love and read Jane Austen,” said Manners. “It’s a sort of absurdist game — until it isn’t.”
After all, they’re children, Duggan said.
“They’re not really considering anything else in the world,” she said.
It’s true to life, she said, and the dialogue supports that. The script, according to Manners, captured the quintessential dry, British humor that was true to the language of her school when she was growing up.
“Everything’s quite heightened because it’s this kind of cold cradle of boarding school that they’re in, and there are no parents that are useful guides,” Manners said. “They’re very in sync. And I think that was particularly important that we feel that, and then we feel that start to slip away as the real world starts to come in and the challenges come in, and their relationship is put under pressure.”
Embodying that dissolution was one of the challenges for Clear and Duggan.
“When the boys come into it, Minna’s mind is a bit all over the place, whereas Flic is very determined, and she’s got a one-track mind,” Duggan said. “Minna can be flexible and can adapt; Flic’s not flexible,” she laughed.
Boys are starting to notice Minna, and she runs with it, savoring the social power the attention grants. That frustrates Flic, who sees it as a distraction from their goal — but really, she just wants to spend more time with Minna, though she might not want to say so or even be able to recognize it.
Clear said that juggling these competing motivations was challenging.
“(Minna) is very driven. She knows exactly where she wants to go,” Clear said. “But I think what’s really interesting about her is that beneath this almost facade she’s quite insecure. Her relationship was with Flic, it is very dependent. They have, like this indescribable relationship that just transcends everything … She adores Flic, and I think she’s torn between so many different things.”
Duggan said that dynamic is part of what makes the film so heartbreaking.
“Minna’s allowed to grow up and want to explore different things,” she said, “and Flic misinterprets that in a different way. But yeah, it’s just growing up, isn’t it?”
Though the characters may drift apart, Duggan and Clear’s relationship only grew stronger over the five weeks of shooting. They were nothing but impressive, Manners said.
“I think the most rewarding thing was working with these incredible (girls),” Manners said. “Both the process of finding them and getting to know them and then sort of working through the casting and seeing the chemistry they have … It’s incredible to me that they had never stepped foot on a film set before.”
The girls looked at each other and laughed.
“We formed a gorgeous friendship from this film,” Clear said, “which is just — it’s like this really strange bond. You can’t replicate it.”
‘Extra Geography’ in-person screenings
- 2:30 pm., Jan. 29, The Ray Theatre
- 3:30 p.m., Jan. 31, Megaplex Redstone 1
- 2:30 p.m., Feb. 1, Broadway Centre Cinemas
Online
- 8 a.m., Jan. 29-11:55 p.m. Feb. 1