Sundance Review: Anna Rose Holmer's 'The Fits' Starring Royalty Hightower

You have to be in a specific sort of mood, and in a peculiar frame of mind, to fully immerse yourself into a film like "The Fits" and walk away feeling like you've just seen something special. Actually, first-time feature film director Anna Rose Holmer draws a very thin line between "special" and "disposable." With her (undoubtedly unique) approach to the age-old genre of the coming-of-age story, she's either showing exceptional courage or completely exposing her lack of experience. It's a bit of both, but by the end of the film, one gets the impression that her way of getting her feet wet was to armstand dive straight into it, which should be admired even by those who aren't enticed to follow her into the water. There's vision here, clearly, and through the use of eye-catching frames and a standout score, "The Fits" works like magic as an experimental performance piece. As an engaging work of well-rounded cinema, however, there are more...