Fitting In

Grade: B+

Fitting In premiered at the South By Southwest Film Festival in March 2023 under the title Bloody Hell. A year and a name change later, it made a few more festival appearances before slinking in and out of select theaters without making much noise. Now, it’s available to rent at all the usual streaming platforms. It’s a minor gem – a wise, rich, charming movie that steers clear of more cliches than it falls victim to. I think any woman (or thoughtful man) will really enjoy it.

21-year-old Maddie Ziegler had a small part in Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story. Otherwise, most of her resume has consisted of being a dancer in lots of music videos, predominantly for Sia’s songs. In Fitting In, she demonstrates that she can be a solid actress and star. She plays Lindy, who lives with her mother Rita in Rita’s recently-passed-away mother’s house. The father has long been out of the picture. At 16, Lindy still has yet to begin menstruating. No worries, Rita tells her. She started late too.

A routine trip to the gynecologist reveals that Lindy has a condition known as MRKH syndrome. It’s rare, but it does exist. She has ovaries, but no uterus, and a very shallow vaginal canal. She can’t biologically have children. She will never get a period (“You’re lucky – they suck,” her best friend Viv tells her). Though sex will one day be possible, she needs to stretch things out down there over time, with the assistance of some tools.

Honesty in the movies is productive and satisfying. When the audience already knows the real information, but characters spend a chunk of the film lying, changing the subject, or avoiding it instead of coming right out with the truth, it’s frustrating, and often feels like a stalling tactic. Lindy’s boyfriend Adam senses something’s been up with her lately, and is in the dark about what. They are about to hook up, which would be for the first time ever, but she puts the brakes on it – using the “I’m on my period” line – and he says “You coulda just told me.” I was thinking that if she had told him the real truth, I bet he would have had the same response.

It’s refreshing to see a true nice guy character in a movie, without any surprises or other shoes dropping in the third act. (Bo Burnham in Promising Young Woman comes to mind as an example of “sure, he seems perfect NOW, but just keep watching…”). Adam is understanding, supportive, the consummate gentleman, and is played with sincerity by D’Pharoah Woon-A-Tai. Emily Hampshire (Stevie from Schitt’s Creek) as Rita is touching, funny, and it’s one of my favorite performances from the first third of the year. I had never heard a single song on this soundtrack, but the music is used memorably and effectively. I liked the way a song will cut out when another character comes into the room, and then it picks back up when they exit the scene. The comedy often goes for easy cheap laughs, and “can I ask you something” is said too many times (making me wonder if there’s a thesaurus for phrases), but more things work than don’t work.

Is it spoiling if I tell you that it concludes open-endedly? A lesser version of the movie would have methodically and systematically provided a clean-cut resolution to every last plot point. Some get tied up, but not everything. The screenplay is smart enough to let the viewer feel that there is more life to be led beyond the final scene in the film. Fitting In ends with Lindy still having things to figure out at a later time – but finally, and most importantly, she is truthful with herself and others, and therefore as free as she’s ever been. Rita tells Lindy her scars don’t hurt anymore, but hiding them hurts. And as another character says, “there’s nothing about you that needs to be fixed.”

Grade: B+