The Fits

**Spoiler Alert**

Director: Anna Rose Holmer/Starring: Royalty Hightower, Alexis Neblett, Inayah Rodgers and Da'Sean Minor

Director Anna Rose Holmer's debut; The Fits, defies expectations and also challenges us to parse its very strange narrative, which is open to multiple interpretations. Knowing little about the film beforehand, I walked into the movie expecting a documentary on an African-American girl and her enthusiasm for competitive boxing, like Zachary Canepari and Drea Cooper's excellent T-Rex, which has also just been released (see my January blog-post for my thoughts on that film). But though Holmer's film is about a young, black, female boxer, it is also a narrative film about something more abstract. Just when you think you think you've sat down to watch a fictional film about an inner city youth, the movie becomes something else; a non-linear story where departures from reality share narrative space with a setting that is tethered to the real world. Arresting images, an intellectually demanding story and an affecting performance from its young star, Royalty Hightower, set Holmer's film apart from the usual art-house fare.

Hightower plays Toni; a young, black girl in a black community in an unidentified city, who spends her days at the local boxing gym, which occupies a space at a community center. She trains with her brother Jermaine (Da'Sean Minor), who runs her through vigorous boxing drills. Toni has easy relationship with her older brother, whose caring, loving regard for his sister is quite touching.

Always in the gym, Toni notices the older girls from the dance class ogling her brother and his friend through the gym's glass doors. Though the all-female dance troupe practices and rehearses next door, Toni's time is spent exclusively in the male-dominated environment. Before long, she begins to notice the girls practicing next door. She also notices their choreographed dance routines, which require dedication and physically demanding moves, which sometimes seem as aggressive as the boy's boxing. Shortly thereafter, Toni steps into their dance room and begins mimicking their moves. And only a short time later does she join the troupe, learning their movements and routines.

Toni befriends two girls her age, who she pals around with before and after class. Of the large assemblage of girls in the troupe, only Toni spends time in the gym.

A strange phenomenon begins to take hold among the dancers. Some girls begin to fall to the floor, convulsing, or having fits. Though the girls and the adult coach are at a loss to explain it, someone mentions that the water may be the culprit. I thought for a moment the film was to be commentary on the situation in Flint, Michigan, where the water supply has been found to be polluted. But no, it is only a coincidence. As Toni moves further and further away from the boxing and more into the dancing, she too experiences something that can only be called bizarrely transformative as she too experiences fits but also levitative manifestations and floating across the floor.

The story is less important than what the strange occurrences represent. As aforementioned, interpretations are legion and I can only offer my own, which are no more or no less valid than other analyses. For those who don't care to have the story spoiled further, skip to the final paragraphs.

For me, the film seems to be about how gender roles are permanently assigned us in childhood. Toni feels comfortable about boxing and spending time in a male-dominated world as an 11 year old, which is just around the age girls begin to enter puberty and pre-adulthood. I interpret the girl's fits as a symbolic moment when womanhood is irrevocably stamped on the female psyche, expelling any traces of the masculine. Just as the older, teen dancers peek through the glass to watch the teen boys in the gym, Toni eventually does the same as she glances through the small windows to watch the boys. Toni trades her boxing gloves and warm-ups for a sparkly dance uniform; a significant transition of gender identity. The gym and dance room are adjacent yet hopelessly separated by biology and psychology. For Toni, her transformation is complete once she has her fit.

The film could also be interpreted as a young woman becoming liberated from the male-dominated world and the fits are merely the moment when the rite occurs. It is no accident that the community center is named Lincoln; for the president's name is synonymous with the emancipation of slaves. Is Toni a slave to gender or male dominance or both? Why has Holmer set her story in a black community? Are the roles assigned young girls any different in a white community?

Holmer leaves us with many interesting images, which include Toni alone in an empty swimming pool; practicing her moves; the troupe in full regalia dancing inside a boxing ring and of course her moment when she experiences her moment of fits. It is interesting that we never see any parents and only one adult in the film. The locations of the community center, the swimming pool and a small bridge where Toni and her brother train and the small bridge the dance troupe later stands across may represent the finite spaces black people are relegated to in inner cities.
The interpretations are endless.

Holmer's first film is an astonishing debut. She obviously has a lot on her mind and isn't bothered or hindered by film-making conventions. Good for her. If her career continues along this course, she will no doubt make a prominent name for herself in cinema. The Fits is challenging and thought provoking and a daring riposte to all the dumbed down summer offerings.