Final Rating: 4/5
It’s always been hard being a teenager, regardless of when you grew up. Wanting to fit in, but not wanting to be like everyone else. Fighting with your parents over every little thing even if they truly only want the best for you. Wanting to be seen as grown up and mature as possible, but also still wanting to enjoy childish things before actual adult responsibilities kick in. Worst of all is your body going through so many changes. You have hormones raging, hair growing everywhere, growth spurts, and you are stuck navigating the complicated world of attraction to other people. All this plus having to study for a math exam. Things get even tougher when you’re expecting these changes to come and they don’t, presenting their own unique set of challenges.
Molly McGlynn has crafted a semi-autobiographical coming of age story that deals with 16 year old Lindy, played by Maddie Ziegler (Music, West Side Story), who goes to get a prescription for birth control and learns that she suffers from MRKH Syndrome. MRKH is when a woman is born without a uterus and effectively has no vaginal canal, which means penetrative sex is either impossible to have or extraordinarily painful. It also means that with no uterus, you can never give birth, robbing a woman of the decision to procreate.
Lindy is your average high schooler. She’s has a crush on Adam, D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai (Reservation Dogs, Beans), who likes her back, has a super supportive best friend in Vivian, Djouliet Amara (Seance) and a single mom raising her, Emily Hampshire (Schitts Creek), who is struggling with her own issues. When Lindy tells Vivian she wants to have sex with Adam, her friend tells her she should be on the pill like she is. Lindy’s mom, Rita, has been nagging her daughter to see a gynaecologist since she’s 16 and hasn’t gotten her first period yet. During her visit to the doctor, when he tries to initiate a pelvic exam and can’t insert a speculum into her vagina a round of exams is ordered before getting diagnosed with MRKH.
Lindy must now cope with the trajectory of her sex life completely altered as a teenager at a time when all she wants to do is feel normal, lose her virginity to boyfriend and not have to lie to best friend about her periods. Predictably, dealing with such major upheaval in ones life inevitably comes with its own set of problems. Lindy routinely has to make up lies to Adam about why they can’t have sex, despite her wanting to. Eventually after brushing him off by saying she’s on her period, she needs to study, she needs to work out and practice for an upcoming track meet, she eventually has to either tell him the truth or break things off. She decides it’s easier to take a break rather deal with the conflicting mess of emotions she refuses to talk about with anyone.
Eventually through meeting Jax (Ki Griffin), a non-binary intersex person, Lindy starts to understand her own feelings as she tries to decipher what being a woman means to her. Lindy still has to deal with the usual pressures of being a teen in the modern age, where it is easier to spill your guts online for strangers than it is talking to your own parents.
The film does a phenomenal job of including outside references to help understand the pain and confusion that Lindy is going through. McGlynn uses horror films to help counter balance the real life drama. When Lindy decides she wants to have sex with Adam it is after watching the Canadian cult horror film Ginger Snaps, which is about two female friends and after one of them gets her period for the first time turns into a lycanthrope. Later in the movie at a costume party Lindy dresses up as the titular character in Carrie about a young woman who gets her period for the first time and unlocks kinetic super powers. Both films show the alienation and horrors that girls feel as they experience shedding their uterine wall for the first time, something that Lindy physically can never do. Later on Rita gives her daughter a copy of The Vagina Monologues, a play that celebrates the differences of women’s reproductive organs no matter how different or abnormal a woman may feel about their own body.
McGlynn and cinematographer Nina Djacic create some truly amazing shots, including a scene where Lindy is in bed trying to masturbate and is given a match cut to her sticking a finger into a dark red blood orange. You can tell how personal and important this story is to McGlynn as the focus of Lindy’s confused thoughts are never not front and center. Whether it is her consent not being paid attention to when a group of med students are brought in to watch her agonizing pelvic exam to Lindy’s anger and frustration with trying to use dilators (medical sex toys) to help stretch her vaginal canal, we are forced to acknowledge and witness her pain and discomfort.
Ziegler turns in a powerhouse performance as Lindy, completely convincing as a teenager who is dealing with more than her fair share of internal problems. Despite having to be in tears for a larger portion of the film, she never makes the performance feel exploitative. We also get some breaks of humour from Emily Hampshire who is doing her best to parent alone while also trying to figure out how to put herself back out in the dating scene. In a hilarious montage we see Rita trying to figure out how to take a sexy selfie for her dating app profile since her previous one was more fitting for LinkedIn than Tinder.
The third act unfortunately stumbles at times as the film falls into some overplayed coming of age tropes at times. There is a scene where Jax gets blows up at Lindy for not wanting to kiss her in public after they had hooked up, despite the fact that a few scenes earlier we learn that Jax had struggled with coming to terms with their own identity and gets mad at her even though Lindy herself has made it clear she has not come to terms with her identity or body yet. The scene plays out like Lindy is the villain, when in reality Jax should not have assumed she was ready to come so suddenly. There is another scene where Lindy loudly admonishes a male classmate for making fun of both her and Vivian as she finally can admit publicly what she has been dealing with. The scene is needed to show that Lindy has overcome her fears, but having a bunch of teens film her as she proclaims she doesn’t care if she is cancelled or not rings false in execution.
Overall the film is utterly frank in its depiction of a very serious condition that affects 1 in 4,500 women. It does not shy away from using proper medical terminology and the pain it can cause. It is argued if women who suffer from MRKH Syndrome are a part of the Intersex community or not, further alienating people as they may not be fully accepted by the 2SLGBTQIA community. In an age where women’s reproductive rights are under attack, the concept of consent is still foreign to some people and gender affirming procedures are being legislated against (something that doesn’t just affect the trans community) this movie celebrates all the highs and lows of being a woman. The film is a unique coming of age story that furthers the idea of universal acceptance and how difficult it is for some people growing up. Fitting In isn’t just a movie, it’s a political statement, an education piece and entertainment all wrapped together. While Zeigler has been misused in past projects, she is a star ready to burst onto the scene in Fitting In.
Fitting In was seen during the 2023 Vancouver International Film Festival. Thank you to Elevation for the screener.
