‘The Fits’ finds a young black girl on the verge of womanhood torn between boxing and dance
Coming of age films for girls are rare, and when they do surface, the plots are often as fleeting and thin as a school-age crush.
Enter “The Fits,” a small film about big emotions, where adolescence feels as foreboding and mysterious as a psychological spy thriller.
Set in a community center in urban Cincinnati, Toni (Royalty Hightower) is an 11-year-old tomboy following in her older brother’s footsteps by training as a boxer. But in the auditorium next to the boxing gym, an all-girl dance troupe represents another world she may be on the cusp of joining. The connecting hallway between the practice areas becomes a fraught crossroads in the journey toward Toni’s adult identity. Will it be boxing or dance, or both?
Complicating the already complicated throes of prepubescence, a wave of mysterious fainting spells and convulsions overtake the drill team girls one by one. Is it a virus, a poisoning or are the young women faking it as a way of setting themselves apart from one another in order to ultimately fit in?
“So much of girlhood is about exploring where you stand in the context of a group,” said director Anna Rose Holmer, who decided to pair the rigors of adolescence with the dynamics of a dance troupe after producing the ballet documentary “Ballet 422.”
“All the girls we’re putting on-screen are complex and complicated, strong and vulnerable, questioning and content. They carry contradictions around with them, making it really hard to define them as a group,” said Holmer, who dropped in the odd plot twist of fainting spells based on her long fascination with documented bouts of mass hysteria.
“The Fits,” which opens Friday in Los Angeles, garnered widespread praise when it premiered last year at the Venice Film Festival, and became an official selection at Sundance as part of the 2016 festival’s Next program.
Made with a 150,000 euro grant (about $170,000) from the Venice Biennale Cinema College, “The Fits” stars first-time actors, most of whom are members of Cincinnati’s real-life drill troupe the Q-Kidz.
The filmmakers scouted rural cheer squads, drill teams and other dance troupes before discovering the Q-Kidz on YouTube. “The Fits” was shot mostly in the community center the dance squad calls home, a respite for at-risk youth nestled in the projects. The award-winning dance outfit competes nationwide in drill competitions, facing off against other teams in a style that incorporates hip-hop moves, call-and-response routines and bucket-loads of attitude.
“Though these kids haven’t been in a film before, they are performers and professionals who compete nationally,” said Holmer. “What makes them so great in those areas translates into making the film. I never felt like I was working with inexperienced, amateur nonprofessionals, it was more like I was collaborating with an elite group of young people who were exceptionally creative.”
Drill routines in the film are a visceral eruption of emotion — the rage of hormones put to a beat. Arms flail, bodies gyrate, feet stomp. It’s the flip side to Toni’s stoicism.
Toni’s conflict between wearing boxing gloves or sparkly nail polish is for the most part internal, making “The Fits” a film with little dialogue. Hightower is a powerful presence, her intense and unnerving gaze often alluding to some deeper mystery that refreshingly has nothing to do with a pink, fuzzy boy crush.
“Sure, sexual awakening, and the haze that comes when your body changes are part of that, but it doesn’t mean before that happens that no work is done in terms of self-identity,” said Holmer. “We wanted something that said this is a complex human being who happens to be an 11-year-old girl. This is going to be an entire experience from her point of view.”
Holmer, who was raised in rural upstate New York, based the idea for the film on her and her filmmaking partners’ preteen experiences.
“It started as a creative dance film,” said Holmer. “Then Lisa Kjerulff, my producer and co-writer, and Saela Davis, co-writer and editor of the film, talked a lot about our experiences growing up. They were all very different, so Toni is a meeting point of the three of us.”
As for the spare, minimalistic feel of the film: “We wanted to focus on lean, necessary elements of story,” said Holmer. “To see stories through a lean, muscular lens — like an athlete, we used only the body weight needed to perform the task.”
