Fitting In review: Maddie Ziegler charms in a journey of unconventional sexual discovery

Adolescence is a tough time for just about everyone, and finding out that you’re different from your peers can only make that time worse. This is half of the wordplay inherent in the title of writer-director Molly McGlynn’s semi-autobiographical film Fitting In, wherein she examines a very personal struggle she had in being diagnosed with a rare reproductive condition in her teenage years. Though not without its rough edges, McGlynn’s film is emotionally raw and willing to engage with the complexities and nuances of her situation, providing a fascinating look at the intersectionality of burgeoning womanhood, intersex identity, and messy sexuality that doesn’t adhere to rigid or widely acknowledged labels.

McGlynn fictionalizes her experiences through self-insert Lindy (Maddie Ziegler), a 16-year-old track runner living with her single mom Rita (Emily Hampshire). Having never had her period but still wanting to pursue sexual activity with her boyfriend Adam (D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai), Rita goes to her gynecologist to receive birth control, only to discover that she does not have much of a vaginal canal to speak of. She is diagnosed with MRKH syndrome, a rare condition wherein she was born without a uterus or full vagina, leaving her unable to have periods, get pregnant, or even have comfortable penetrative sex without dilation or so-called corrective surgery.

This realization puts Lindy on an emotional roller coaster that isolates her from Adam and her best friend Viv (Djouliet Amara), as she lashes out when she doesn’t feel she can share this difference with them or anyone else. After all, how can she, when doesn’t even understand what her diagnosis means for her going forward? Is she any less of a woman for not having a uterus? Does she want to embrace an intersex or non-binary identity like her effortlessly confident acquaintance Jax (Ki Griffin)? Can she just force a “normal” sex life into existence through sheer stubbornness, skipping up whole sizes of dilators just to carve out a dick-sized hole in herself? Or is she doomed to perpetual virginity, whatever “virginity” even means? These are messy, complicated issues of individual identity and self-acceptance that McGlynn carefully avoids making universal in their application through a cast of characters with varying experiences in their adolescent sexualities. Instead, she focuses on how Lindy has to come to terms with her unique situation and find a way forward that works for her.

It’s this individualized awareness of how identity is crafted that allows Fitting In to examine broader questions of womanhood and how hazy that concept can actually be. Is Rita any less of a woman for being uncoupled, or for being a breast cancer survivor? Of course not, but the juxtaposition between a woman missing a breast and a woman without a functional reproductive system draws into focus how sex characteristics are an imperfect way to measure the immeasurable status of womanhood. Does the traditionally femme Lindy need to adopt androgyny like Jax or consider herself part of the “I” in LGBTQIA? Not if she doesn’t want to, and it’s the willingness to ask and examine these questions that cause McGlynn’s script to soar.

Where the film tends to fall short is in its insistence on trying to bill itself as a comedy. McGlynn’s overall direction is competent, if not exactly inspired—her background as a television director is not hard to deduce—and the soft manner in which characters deliver lines clearly intended as jokes rarely comes across as much more than mildly amusing ribbing. This isn’t a fatal flaw, but it does cause the first act to stumble along before getting to the core of Lindy’s dilemmas, attempting to couch the film’s tone in a charisma that’s never firmly established and only grows into itself once those weightier questions begin presenting themselves.

Fitting In’s issues are not uncommon in independent, highly personal projects, and in this case, it’s the personal nature of the film that comes out ahead as its defining feature. Ziegler is a fantastic lead, bringing us into Lindy’s confused headspace to examine emotions that she doesn’t dare vocalize to her friends and family, and McGlynn’s direction of the performance is surely instrumental in bringing her own experiences with MRKH syndrome to life. It’s a compelling journey through an unconventional adolescence, but it’s also not a completely foreign depiction of young adulthood, particularly for those who have a complicated relationship with their gender and sexuality. In the end, it’s not the labels that matter so much as loving yourself as you are, or for whatever personal ideal you want to become, and Fitting In could hardly do better in making that elusively simple message resonate loud and clear.

Fitting In releases in theaters on February 2