Director: Molly McGlynn
Cast: Maddie Ziegler, D’Pharoah Woon-A-Tai, Djouliet Amara, Emily Hampshire
Screenplay: Molly McGlynn
105 mins. Rated R.

It’s always great to see smaller films from the festival circuit find a distributor, especially when those films tackle a subject matter that I’d never even heard of. Such is the case with today’s film, a Shoes Movie if I’ve ever seen one, a coming-of-age teen sex comedy with a unique character journey throughout.

Lindy (Maddie Ziegler, West Side Story) is your average teenager just trying to keep a handle on her hormones long enough to survive High School. On the eve of losing her virginity, Lindy discovers a disastrous development: she has MRKH syndrome, a congenital malformation which results in a missing uterus or vaginal hypoplasia. To put it simply, she can’t have vaginal sex. As Lindy weaves her way throughout understanding this new wrinkle to her life at the very time she is experiencing her sexual awakening, she has to find acceptance in her body in all of its unique ways.

If you haven’t followed me for long, I have a personal fascination with Shoes Movies, films that feature stories about people nothing like me. For most of my youth, I watched movies led by Straight White Males (and there were lots of movies like that), but as I’ve gotten older, I’ve found my interest lining up with people don’t share my race or gender or sexual orientation. These movies allow me to step inside the Shoes of people whose experiences I’ll never fully know. In many ways, Fitting In is a Shoes movie for most people, a story that many will never fully experience.

Originally titled Bloody Hell when it premiered at SXSW, Fitting In is a semi-autobiographical story from writer/director Molly McGlynn (Mary Goes Round). I feel like McGlynn was able to imbue a lot of her own style into the narrative and the characters, even if she still leaned a little too much on the classic tropes of coming-of-age films. There’s a definite twist to the subgenre with the MRKH diagnosis, and that area of the narrative is informative, interesting, and provides the strongest elements of the film. It’s in the unusual circumstances of Lindy’s journey that allows for the best comedic moments and emotional resonance.

On the other side of things, there are certainly a few instances, especially in the film’s climax (to protect the film’s finale, I won’t reveal specifics, but when you see it, I think you’ll understand), where the story falls into overly-familiar trappings that audiences have seen too many times. When the film focuses on the MRKH and how it changes Lindy’s perspective and journey, it’s a winning formula, but when it leans on familiar trappings, it loses momentum.

Fitting In has a unique perspective on the coming-of-age story, one that its director is able to imbue with her own personality and style. It presents a main character whose already chaotic youth experience is further complicated by health revelations, which makes for a compelling take on this subgenre. Though occasionally familiar, Fitting In makes for an experience worth checking out.

3/5
-Kyle A. Goethe