Critics reviews

It is indeed an impressive debut that works strongly on a purely cinematic level. The Fits is a film built on the senses: looking, listening, moving, dancing, hitting. The image that remains in the mind is that of its young heroine Toni (Royalty Hightower), and especially her unwavering gaze as she observes her surroundings.

In keeping with the references to Minnelli's underrated masterpiece [MADAME BOVARY], one must note the final dance number that's comparable to musical numbers from his better-received work, though it's not hysterical so much as it is ecstatic. Just one more thing that will stay with you after watching this singular film. Also as impressive as the story and performances is the mise-en-scene; Holmer is no mere stylist—she's an emerging auteur.

Holmer demonstrates a shrewd understanding of girls' interior lives. She and cinematographer Paul Yee infuse the community center, in and around which the entire film takes place, with elements of magical realism to accentuate the protagonist's passage from childhood into adolescence. The neutral color palette and the primal motions of the boxing gym, where the girl finds sanctuary, contrast with the garish glitter and ritualistic movement of the dance class, an exercise in feminine conformity.

On the positive fictional side, any low-budget fiction debut would be hard pressed to compete with Anna Rose Holmer's The Fits, which debuted at Sundance and keeps its lens firmly on the distinctive face, head and, occasionally, body of 11-year-old African-American actress Royalty Hightower in order to keep us close to her interiority. Her compact and powerful young form is all the more aesthetically arresting because of the careful way it's shot.

Unlike the appallingly manipulative Swiss Army Man, a trite and showy film about loneliness that treats its viewers like freshman philosophy students, The Fits sees coming-of-age not as a twee excuse for showboating but an opportunity to deepen the mystery of everyday expression. Work and play are not separate experiences but flipsides of the same thorny perspective.

It weaves a spell with a mood of unnameable uneasiness. Being a girl seems to be the central problem, or maybe being a girl is not a problem at all. "The Fits" is the kind of film that asks more questions than it answers. The questions have echoing resonance.

The fits become a poetic expression of the girls' individuality, or their own suffering and alienation in patriarchal structures. Collectively, those who experience the episodes know the feeling, though it is different for all. In this way, illness becomes liberation, and Toni's final conversion becomes a brave act of accepting her own sexuality.

The miracle of the movie is that, like Toni, it transcends blunt, reductive categorization partly because it's free of political sloganeering, finger wagging and force-fed lessons. Any uplift that you may feel won't come from having your ideas affirmed, but from something ineluctable – call it art.

Shortly after [Toni] joins the troupe, the women begin suffering intense, enigmatic fainting spells, or fits. Are these an affliction, or possibly an initiation into a state of grace? Holmer doesn't answer that question outright, and her film, both intimate and bracingly cinematic, is better for it. The Fits riffs on the power and mystery of adolescent beauty, and on the joy of what it means to move.

In The Fits, emotion becomes motion and psychology becomes space. It's a coming-of-age story, but Holmer mostly eschews dialogue and standard storytelling devices; she tells her tale through movements and patterns and the way that she films them.

Holmer pares down the story to conjure contemplative moods; she films the children with poised observational tenderness and pushes, calmly but decisively, through practicalities to unfold fantasies and dreams. The movie's natural sweetness vibrates with mysteries.

A coming-of-age story distinguished by more than its determined yet solitary protagonist, the beautifully constructed film is by turns deeply poignant and laugh-out-loud funny.