In her feature debut premiered in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition of this year’s Sundance Film Festival, Molly Manners sets out to explore the fragile, often messy threshold between girlhood and adulthood through the intense bond shared by two teenage friends at an English girls’ boarding school. On paper, Extra Geography promises a sharp, wry coming-of-age tale; in practice, it struggles to ground its ambitions in psychologically convincing terrain, repeatedly slipping into familiar, and at times troubling, narrative shortcuts.

From a purely technical standpoint, the film is carefully crafted. Andrew Commis’ cinematography is controlled and expressive, adopting a pastel, light-hearted palette for much of the first two-thirds before veering abruptly into much darker, gloomier hues. This visual shift mirrors the turn in the relationship between Minna, Flic and their geography teacher, but it also nudges the film into territory that feels closer to a psychological thriller than a coming-of-age drama; an escalation that seems excessive and not entirely earned. The setting, meanwhile, remains deliberately vague: somewhere between the 1990s and early 2000s, with minimal technology and no explicit temporal markers, an aesthetic choice that reinforces the film’s retro sensibility but also adds to its sense of emotional detachment.

The two young leads, Marni Duggan and Galaxie Clear, deliver fair performances as Minna and Flic, capturing the synchronised rhythms and insularity of adolescent friendship. Yet they also feel constrained by the exaggerated quirkiness demanded by the script, penned by Miriam Battye. Their characters’ defining “summer project” - a self-imposed game to fall in love with their geography teacher - feels futile and ill-conceived from the outset, and forces the narrative into increasingly surreal dynamics that are only loosely justified through a prism of queerness, hinted at but never clearly articulated.

This is where the film’s most significant problems emerge. The psychology of the characters remains frustratingly underdeveloped: Minna and Flic neither meaningfully grow, nor appear convincingly traumatised by the highly problematic situation they drift into with their teacher, played by Alice Englert. The result is an uneasy portrait of adolescence that seems unsure whether it is critiquing, romanticising, or simply observing the power imbalances at its core.

Manners peppers the film with a catalogue of well-worn coming-of-age clichés: the self-empowering slow-motion walk through school corridors, hair theatrically unleashed; the end-of-year stage play that reaffirms hierarchies, rather than functioning as a collective experience; long, awkward silences to reveal the characters’ discomfort; boys written as little more than walking libido; and adults who remain conspicuously oblivious. The dialogue often tips into predictability, occasionally to the point of inadvertent comedy, with exchanges that leave one more perplexed than moved.

By the time Extra Geography reaches its conclusion, the sense of déjà vu is hard to overcome. This is a story that has been told countless times before, here rendered in an even clunkier and messier form, weighed down by its own retro affectations and unresolved ethical tensions. One is left wondering whether we really need yet another 1990s-flavoured coming-of-age drama that mistakes familiarity for insight, and stylisation for substance.

Extra Geography is produced by British firm Brock Media. HanWay Films is selling the feature worldwide.