Molly McGlynn describes shooting Fitting In, a coming-of-age 'traumedy' about the filmmaker’s experience with MRKH syndrome, as a 'personal exorcism.'Handout
A few years ago, at a coffee shop in Athens, Molly McGlynn sat down with Paul Thomas Anderson for a three-hour meeting, on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
“I was Googling flights from Athens to Toronto under the table, because I was having such a fight-or-flight experience,” says McGlynn, who had taken part in a screenwriting residency called the Oxbelly Labs where the There Will Be Blood and Licorice Pizza filmmaker was a mentor.
The script Anderson came to discuss was an “offensively early draft” of McGlynn’s second feature, Fitting In (formerly known as Bloody Hell). The film is a coming-of-age “traumedy” about the filmmaker’s experience with MRKH syndrome, a rare congenital disorder that affects the female reproductive system.
At age 16, McGlynn found out that she was born without a uterus. She sat in a medical office with her mother as a male doctor told her that she would never be able to carry a child, have her period, or engage in sexual intercourse without the help of a dilator, a tube-shaped medical device intended to stretch the vagina.
While her mother began weeping, McGlynn said she felt completely numb. It’s one of many scenes in Fitting In, which will premiere at TIFF this year after playing SXSW in March, that will surely break your heart.
This, and so much more personal detail, was in the script Anderson had in his hands. Frozen in fear, McGlynn decided to lead with vulnerability.
“I remember saying to Paul, ‘Obviously, you’re a living legend and I admire you tremendously, but in this context, you’re a strange man at a café and I am feeling kind of uncomfortable.’ He was so lovely and was like, ‘Look, I completely get it.’ ”
Six years after her first feature Mary Goes Round premiered at TIFF and won the Jay Scott Emerging Artist Award from the Toronto Film Critics Association, McGlynn returns with one of the riskiest films that’s ever been produced in Canada.
Fitting In opens with Lindy (Maddie Ziegler) having just moved to a new town with her neurotic single mother Rita (Schitt’s Creek’s Emily Hampshire). She’s on the precipice of losing her virginity to her boyfriend Adam (Reservation Dogs’ D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai) when she receives a life-changing diagnosis – she’ll never be able to have sex unless she essentially makes her own vagina.
What begins as a conventional teen movie soon unravels into a medical horror show. Lindy submits to gynecological exams by unfeeling male doctors and hours of mandatory dilation in her bedroom. Just when she should be embracing her sexuality, Lindy feels like a science project, until she meets another student born intersex named Jax (breakout Ki Griffin). Feeling isolated from her friends and mother, Lindy experiments with sex and rebellion as she embraces her own autonomy.
“Making this film was a very, very expensive and risky form of public therapy,” says McGlynn, who got through a challenging film shoot in Sudbury with the help of her female collaborators. “However, it’s been hugely transformative in how I’m able to – for once, at 37 years old – sit with some comfort in myself.”
A crucial partner in McGlynn’s journey toward self-acceptance is her star, Ziegler, who bears such a striking resemblance to her director that she could play her in a Yellowjackets remount. Having grown up in the public eye on the reality show Dance Moms, Ziegler’s career has also been dominated by her relationship with the pop star Sia. After appearing in Sia’s music videos for Chandelier and Elastic Heart as a tween, she played an autistic teenager in the singer’s directorial debut Music, which was lambasted by critics.
Since then, Ziegler has been quietly carving out an acting career, most notably in Megan Park’s The Fallout, where she played a teenager recovering from the aftermath of a school shooting. Fitting In, which showcases Ziegler’s dry wit and vulnerability, represents a potential turning point for her career.
“For reasons other than having MRKH, Maddie understands what it feels like to feel othered,” said McGlynn about her casting choice. “I also thought, from a meta sense, this film is about a young woman claiming autonomy and agency over her body. From my perspective, Maddie is someone who has not always had the opportunity to do that.”
You’d need a heart of stone not to feel pained during a scene in which a male doctor examines Lindy’s vagina beside a group of medical students against her consent. While McGlynn describes shooting Fitting In as a “personal exorcism,” she also knew she had to protect her lead against harm.
“Maddie wants to push, push, push, and that’s the dancer in her,” McGlynn says. “But at no point did I want to traumatize Maddie while making a story about my own trauma.”
Fitting In’s Canadian premiere represents a homecoming for a director who built her career making indie shorts in Toronto. After Lena Dunham tweeted her praise for the 2014 short film McGlynn directed, I Am Not A Weird Person, McGlynn got an agent and began directing episodes of Workin’ Moms and the CBC web series How To Buy A Baby.
In 2018, she moved to Los Angeles with nothing but a suitcase and her Yorkie. In just a few years, she has quickly built a formidable career directing episodes of Grace and Frankie, Grown-ish and the Apple TV+ series The Big Door Prize, for which she was shortlisted for an Emmy nomination. Her life is different now, complete with a fiancé who also works in film.
While it’s been 21 years since her MRKH diagnosis, McGlynn says she still feels caught between the past and present.
“Obviously, this film is about a reproductive condition and I can’t carry a child, but when we finished the film in December, it was a cold Toronto night, and I was like, ‘Have I ever left?’ ” recounted McGlynn. “I realized it was nine months from starting prep to finishing the film and it just stopped me in my tracks at the corner of Queen and Ossington. I was like, ‘Well, here’s my baby that I couldn’t have.’ ”
Film Review
Fitting In
Written and directed by Molly McGlynn
Starring Maddie Ziegler and Emily Hampshire
Classification N/A ; 105 minutes
Maddie Ziegler, right, and Emily Hampshire star in Canadian director Molly McGlynn’s feature film Fitting In.GERRY KINGSLEY/The Canadian Press
Critic’s Pick
Fitting In is a raw “traumedy” about the kinds of subjects that make Republicans lose their mind: queer desire, female genitalia and blurry definitions of gender. Six years after her first feature Mary Goes Round premiered at TIFF, Canadian filmmaker Molly McGlynn returns with a clear-eyed coming-of-age movie that is one of the riskiest films our country has ever produced. A standout Maddie Ziegler plays Lindy, a 16-year-old track star who’s very excited to lose her virginity to her boyfriend Adam (Reservation Dogs’ D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai) until a staggering medical diagnosis of MRKH syndrome completely derails her life. Turning away from her best friend (Djouliet Amara) and single mother (Emily Hampshire) in her time of need, Lindy experiences what can only be called a medical horror show in a painful journey toward self-acceptance. Thanks to its wonderful cast and McGlynn’s polished direction, Fitting In is an unflinching portrait of a young woman with an open heart and an underdeveloped vagina. The film is full of warmth, as well as gallows humour.
Fitting In screens at TIFF Sept. 9, 8 p.m., Scotiabank Theatre, and Sept. 12, 11:30 a.m., Bell Lightbox