STEPHEN SILVER:‘How to Have Sex’ and ‘Fitting In’: Fine coming of age movies by directors named Molly
February 1, 2024
This weekend’s other Molly-directed movie about teen girls trying to have sex is Fitting In, which debuted at South by Southwest last spring under the title Bloody Hell (I can’t decide which of the two titles I like more).
If you really, really liked the gynecologist joke at the end of Barbie, here comes another movie that combines Barbie references with gynecological detail. Also like Barbie? There’s a big speech at the end that’s way better than America Ferrera’s.
Fitting In, another poignant coming-of-age film with a very different vibe from the other one this week, stars Maddie Ziegler as Lindy, a 16-year-old who discovers that she essentially does not have a functional vagina or reproductive system. This explains her lack of periods up until that point but throws a big wrench into plans to lose her virginity to her boyfriend Adam (D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, from the great TV series Reservation Dogs.)
The condition is formally called MRKH syndrome, from which McGlynn, the writer/director, also suffers. And this is certainly an experience that lends itself to subtle nuances, such as missing out on such female bonding rituals as being able to complain about her period or borrow a tampon.
Other things, though, are played for comedy, such as the notion that birth control is “a gateway drug to Big Pharma,” and the best use of Peaches’ song “Fuck the Pain Away” since that one Letterkenny episode. There’s also a fight over a lane at the high school track that seems like a homage to the Mary Decker/Zola Budd incident.
Ziegler, the lead actress, is Sia’s longtime “mini-me” who also starred in one of the worst movies of the millennium, Music. But she’s much better here, successfully holding the screen and conveying the emotional stakes of the story.
It can’t be overstated enough how this is the type of story that Hollywood never, ever touched until relatively recently, seemingly with the belief that it would disgust male moviegoers and that marketing such stories to female ones wouldn’t be worth it. Last summer’s Judy Blume adaptation Are You There God It’s Me Margaret made a teenage girl getting her first period as the climax of an eloquent emotional arc. But let’s not forget- that beloved book took 50 years to make it to the screen.
Fitting In comes out in theaters on Friday.
