Maria and I saw the most wonderful movie  Sunday afternoon, we drove to nearby Williamstown, Mass. to see The Fits, an indie summer movie from first-time director Anna Rose Holmer.  The Fits is a haunting and lyrical exploration of puberty and identity, especially in the tumultuous world of young women.

Toni (Royalty Hightower) lives in an Ohio housing project with her brother Germaine.

We never see her home. The movie – it has less dialogue than perhaps any movie I have ever seen, but manages to say more than most movies with much chatter – takes place in a nearby community center.

Initially, Toni mostly hangs out with her brother and his fellow boxers, but she is steadily drawn into the exotic world of The Lionesses, a an almost mystical dance group whose members are breathtaking, almost animal like in their dancing style.

Toni doesn’t say much with words, but a lot with her eyes and body.  Hightower is such a skilled actress she almost always conveys precisely what she is thinking and feeling.

From the first, Toni is told to abandon her individuality and join the team. She is always watching, looking for some way in. Yet it is clear from the first that she doesn’t really want to get in.

She tries out for the dance group, and she is accepted,  but she refuses to “join the team”, every dance step is a chance for her to assert her independence.

Toni clings to her own identity with great strength and will.  Have any of us forgotten the powerful desire to join the group, and the painful experience of never being able to fully submit to it?

Suddenly, the group turns frightening: one group member after another is stricken with mysterious and frightening seizures, blamed on demons, sexual cravings and even bad water.

The dance group – Toni very much wanted to join – is suddenly dangerous. Butthe real danger for Toni and in her mind is absorption into the group, not death or illness. Toni seems to sense that from the beginning.

The true cause of these collapses is never known, and we never really know if they are real or a part of the identity crises that grip so many young women and men.

Holmer is brilliantly restrained in making this movie, not only is there little dialogue – the dancing is hypnotic, amazing – but she resists the temptation to make The Fits overtly about race. She skips the heavy hand, the obvious choice, there is not one single cliche or stereotype in this film.

The Fits is about being a young woman and hanging on to the core of yourself, pure and simple. It is about being a girl.

It is also about coping with the roiling pressures, inside and out, that come with puberty and the advent of sexuality. Nobody gets shot, arrested, or chased down a street, there are no politics. Yet race does hover subtly over the movie, and I believe it is the first mainstream film I have seen that has only one white person, a school nurse who appears briefly and ineffectually.

Freed of the sometimes painful and difficult interaction with whites, the movie is free to soar and it does, it breaks new ground.

The movie is about the struggle of individuals to fit in, every one of the movie’s 72 minutes is beautiful, riveting and honest. Toni is choosing her path in the world, and she inspires us throughout.  She never fails her sense of self.

Fitting in is a lifelong challenge for anyone who cares about identity, I have never managed to do it. I fit into my life with Maria, that is the first time I have ever experienced the sensation of truly belonging. And there are really just the two of us and some wonderful friends.

I’m not sure that really counts as fitting in. But I loved Toni and very much loved the movie. So did Maria.

The movie glides along like a beautiful dream, the ending is lyrical and wonderful, a soaring liberation of the spirit that left both of us deeply moved. I recommend it highly.

I will be thinking about it a long time, and I can’t imagine that any young person would not greatly benefit from seeing it and seeing how one brave  young girl hangs onto herself in the raging storm of adolescence. Old people often lament not being young, but being young is no picnic.

Toni shows us how to do it.