'The Fits' A Review

The Fits is a a coming-of-age drama about Toni, an eleven-year-old who trains with her brother at a boxing gym in the local community center. After watching the girls' dance team rehearse she reluctantly decides to join. Toni(Royalty Hightower) is quietly torn between boxing and the comfortable and companionable world of her brother and his friends and the more alluring, complicated, confusing dynamics of the girls and young women of the dance team. The situation becomes even more complicated when older members of the dance team begin to have inexplicable violent fits.

Hightower gives an incredible subtle performance, quiet but rich with emotion and subtext. The supporting cast full of mostly unknowns all give remarkably poised and engaging turns, conveying a solidity and authenticity that give the story striking, seemingly effortless, depth.

Visually the film has the potential to be mundane, its just a community center in a city, but the weather seems perpetually overcast, the interiors strangely shadowed. The cinematography evokes not only the uncertainty of youth but an eerie sense of precarious foreboding. The score helps to elevate the routine to the uncanny in a way that singularly captures adolescence.

A fresh and beguiling take on a familiar subject.

See It.