Extra Geography
EIFF Film #1
Extra Geography is a debut feature film that bursts onto the scene with the confidence and assurance of a kid leaving the exam hall knowing they aced it.
It’s rich, crisp, and possesses a wholly unique allure that captures a specific kind of friendship. A friendship purely based on academic superiority, and the vile (but very realistic) need for competition. A friendship formed on rotten soil, where jealousy is the seed that blossoms into something sour.
There’s almost a theatricality running through the film, drama dripping in every scene, the unknowing of when this friendship will expire. Everything in the film, every decision made, every word used, feels intentionally like it's holding the weight of the end of the world. There's nowhere more important than high school.
Despite being set within the confines of a school, their world feels so expansive, everything feels very grand and sweeping. It's partially due to the gorgeous way that this film was captured, which makes it feel like these two girls are the only things that matter. The wide, vastness that surrounds them is just playthings at their disposal.
The film is grasping at an idea that is rarely explored due to how nuanced and complex friendships can be at this age, especially female friendships (I have many close female friends who went through weirdly similar things as this). The realities of friendships built around convenience, friendships formed in academic incubators where the only goal is the next goal. It begs the question: were these friends ever friends in the first place? But coming to learn that, pulling a mask off the friendship to see what really is underneath, is a very difficult thing to process, and the film manages to grasp the sorrow and the heartbreak that can arise in these situations so wonderfully.
What the film nails is the individual journeys that happen within relationships, how those journeys can align and suddenly drift and then be so far removed from each other that it's hard to understand that there was even a relationship in the first place. Through the bitter, vicious jealousy can arise a self-realisation of worth, a discovery of oneself through the eyes of others, but all of this contempt and cruelty doesn't negate the fact that love also exists in these relationships.
The friendship shown is really difficult to watch as a viewer, as you're aware, on the basis of why their friendship has formed, but you also get a sense for how it must feel to be in that relationship, how good it must feel to have a person who you feel is your equal. That really comes down to the wonderful performances by both actresses who bring to life these characters so vividly. At once they are tender and loving, but how quickly that can turn so sharp and cruel.
This film is genuinely a breath of fresh air. It has cinematic influences that it wears on its sleeve, but it's so wholly unique. I've not seen anything quite like this that blends the tender lovingness of a sleepover movie with the heartbreaking realities of friendship breakups. It's an A+ in my books.