FCCB Festival: THE FITS Review

The Fits is a brief, seventy minute movie that attaches itself to one aspect of the human psyche and explores it thoroughly. In this specific instance the psyche we're exploring is that of an eleven year-old girl who is approaching the first transitional stage of her life in which she is aware such a transition is taking place. Up until this point in most of our lives we simply accept things as they are, take change as it comes; assuming it is an identical part of life to everyone around us, but on the cusp of puberty we become frightfully aware of just how different each of us can be. That is the type of change that is scary. That is the type of change that can take us in a direction we're unsure of, a direction we're not even sure we want to go. I personally believe we have a lot of say so in our own destiny, at least up to a certain point, given how hard we're willing to work, but The Fits and its writer/director/producer Anna Rose Holmer aren't really talking about destiny here, but more they are discussing the stresses of acceptance and how much that noun can affect the psychology of a young girl on the brink of beginning her passage to becoming a woman. Sounds like a lot for seventy minutes, right? It is and it isn't as the film overall is more of a metaphor than an actual, fully developed story with the exploration of its main themes not given enough time to fill in the holes left by the lack of story. The film ends up trying to find some kind of balance between the two but is only able to sway back and forth between showing us the turmoil of conflict that our main character is dealing with internally and outright exploiting the sudden sickness of characters around her for the sake of getting said metaphor's point across. This undoubtedly sounds puzzling if one is unaware of the context the film provides, so let's back up a bit first...