Fitting In: The Eternal Teen Question, 'What's Wrong With Me?' Gets Intimately Personal
By Jim Slotek
Rating: B
High school memories tend to be mercifully fewer as one gets older. The touching and unusual teen comedy-drama Fitting In brought one back that I hadn’t thought of in decades.
I vividly remember girls in my extended group of friends gossiping about a popular girl who hadn’t had her period yet, as in, how weird is that?
And that was in the primitive, pre-smartphone word-of-mouth era.
Emily Hampshire and Maddie Ziegler in Fitting In.
Fitting In, written and directed by Molly McGlynn (Mary Goes Round), starts with that exact premise, hence the memory jog. Amplified by the immediacy of texts, the story of 16-year-old high school athlete Lindy (Maddie Ziegler) and her medical condition seems like it would be crushing to any teen. But Fitting In is a story about a personal victory.
Playing Lindy with moods that range from frustration to sardonicism to scattershot anger, Ziegler gives an endearing performance in a film that is all about the performances.
When we meet her, Lindy has no idea anything is “wrong” with her, other than the aforementioned. But she is love-struck over Adam (D'Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai) and is serious about taking things to the next level.
A trip to the gynecologist for birth control reveals the extent of this “wrongness.” She has Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser Syndrome (MRKH), a conditioned marked by underdevelopment of the uterus and vagina. This means, in one diagnosis, she is told she can never have children nor have penetrative sex.
Fitting In is kind of on-the-nose in the way it portrays the transference of attitudes. Lindy’s initial gynecologist is an older man, who prescribes a series of sex-toys and contrivances to at least, hopefully, give her a semblance of a “functioning” vagina. Her frustration is portrayed with exasperated humour by Ziegler, which accentuates the underlying ridiculousness of the treatment process and its goals.
Thankfully, even in her worst moments, Lindy has support, though she’s often inclined to reject it. She spends the longest time hiding her situation, sometimes awkwardly, from her best friend and fellow track athlete Vivian (Djouliet Amara). And then there’s her mom Rita (Emily Hampshire), a breast cancer survivor who knows a thing or two about dealing with the cards you’re dealt in life.
As for Adam, well, he tries. But as word spreads and parties become drunken soap operas, it’s a newfound friend, the sexually fluid Jax (Ki Griffin who helps her find balance and self-acceptance.
Describing Fitting In makes it sound like a movie that puts its message ahead of the narrative. For the most part, the opposite is true. Given the circumstances, the characters all act in unsurprising and believable ways. There’s a natural sense to the acting, and even when she lashes out or makes bad decisions, Lindy remains sympathetic and understandable.
Fitting In does briefly break into preachiness in the last act, with a public pronouncement that seems out of place considering the subtler approach that led up to it.
The movie pulls some punches, as well. I felt certain some character would try to maliciously connect her athleticism with her condition, especially in this era when “What is a woman?” is an angry rallying cry for anti-trans types and women’s sports itself has become politicized.
But that might have soured Fitting In’s essential sweetness and message of self-acceptance.
Fitting In. Written and directed by Molly McGlynn. Starring Maddie Ziegler, Emily Hampshire and Ki Griffin. Opens in theatres Friday, February 2.