A movie centered around an abortion that’s less about abortion and more about young women supporting each other in the oppressive shadow of uncertainty, “Never Rarely Sometimes Always” follows a young protagonist, Sidney Flanigan’s Autumn, who encompasses a rare ordinality that makes us certain we’ve known someone like her before. Maybe we recently passed by her in the grocery store, on a sidewalk, at the bus station. Maybe there was an exchange of words. Maybe we hadn’t thought about them since. “Never Rarely Sometimes Always” is the kind of film that makes you consider ordinary faces in the crowd as not just faces, but unique collections of decision to make, paths to trod down, experiences to live.
There is sheer power and heart-wrenching effect in how straightforward Eliza Hittman’s third, and best, feature is. With her latest, the writer-director has carved out a trilogy of sorts – one that includes 2013’s “It Felt Like Love” and 2017’s “Beach Rats” – about defining moments in the singular abyss of the American teenager experience. There’s the spark of sexual curiosity in her characters’ eyes, but Hittman rarely goes for sunny destinations; she’s more interested in consequence and fallout. Her movies can have an aura of aesthetic romanticism, yet what she puts her characters through is anything but romantic.
“Never Rarely Sometimes Always” is as unassuming as the quiet Autumn, and more than a few long stretches of her journey to get an abortion – which takes her from suburban Pennsylvania to New York City – could pass for documentary as Hittman relies on implication and subtle messaging to fill the movie’s still moments. And the film bursts with still moments. But it nonetheless has the feel of a mighty accomplishment, of a story that grasps empathy to tackle a perpetually timely topic which, if not taboo, can be approached by filmmakers with self-destructive trepidation. Hittman doesn’t take a side in her movie—the way she’s constructed it, there aren’t sides to choose between.
The film’s perspective is firmly rooted in that of Autumn, who we’re introduced to as she’s performing a solo music act in a school show. A jeer from a boy awkwardly stalls the tune for a brief moment before she charges ahead—an early signal of a character we come to know as capable of following through on her decisions, but also a bit confused as to how twisty the road can get (a characteristic shared by Hittman’s previous protagonists).
“Never Rarely Sometimes Always” could be described as a teenage procedural as Autumn makes the discovery of her pregnancy and embarks on researching her options, without cluing her family in on what’s happened. Perhaps we’ve been in similar situations. Hittman, also her own screenwriter, takes care not to dilute the plot with semantics; we aren’t made privy to the details of the the sexual encounter. Hittman limits that knowledge to an implicating glance tossed across a restaurant floor in an early scene.
Instead, we learn what we need to know from the ambiguity—that this probably wasn’t a particularly romantic experience. And a devastating exchange between Autumn and a clinician lays bare where she stands on rearing a child at this stage in her life: “Even if it’s negative, it might still be positive,” she’s told when doing her pregnancy test. Autumn asks if that works both ways. It doesn’t. “A positive is always a positive.”
That matter-of-factness will continue to present obstacles for Autumn as the movie goes on. There’s an education to be had in watching “Never Rarely Sometimes Always” as Hittman tinges her story with the realities borne of the American healthcare system, realities that Autumn must now contend with when she learns the local abortion clinics require guardian approval for procedures on minors.
Emotional isolation, meanwhile, seeps into rooms that are coldly shot by Helene Louvart as our protagonist tries to self-induce abortion, via methods that are at first clinical, then violent. The scene is a crushing one, and Flanigan expertly sells how few options Autumn has – and how even some of those options are impossible – when she begins to break down in it.
But if “Never Rarely Sometimes Always” is a story about female determinism, it’s also one about female recognition, and Autumn’s cousin, Skylar (a fantastic Talia Ryder) has that look of recognition in her eyes as Autumn gets sick at work. Few words are exchanged between them about how Autumn got to this point; only what she intends to do about it. A bag is packed, bus tickets bought and a journey to New York begun. The bluntness is crushing—this isn’t a lively jaunt to the Big Apple. It’s something much more saddening.
How we would usually expect these kinds of movies to go – weighty conversations between the two girls, heavy-handed musical cues revving the plot to life, climactic moments of overwrought bravura – isn’t how “Never Rarely Sometimes Always” shakes out. There might be more words spoken by characters on the fringes of the plot than by Autumn and Skylar themselves, but the scant dialogue Hittman does write for them asserts a piercingly true-to-life emphasis on unspoken feelings of gratitude, anxiousness, fortitude.
What I most appreciate about the film is how it presents its cards how it’s dealt them, much like Autumn and Skylar do as what they thought would take one afternoon turns into three overwhelming days, with nowhere to sleep and few people to turn to for help as money runs out. The storytelling is subtle and practical in these sequences, effectively so. There is no trickery from Hittman’s screenplay to trap us in the good graces of Autumn’s decision by way of You just haven’t been in her shoes. The filmmaker isn’t sternly digging her foot into political territory – certainly not to overshadow the story – and “Never Rarely Sometimes Always” isn’t insisting we agree with what Autumn does. Just that we take in the rawness of her experience, absorb an emotional intimacy that comes to the fore when Autumn and Skylar literally reach out to support each other in parallel scenes of echoing magnitude.
The result is a portrait of a girl’s journey, nothing more and nothing less. There’s starkness in the simplicity when we see Autumn wandering big-city streets, mentally transitioning from avoiding the next hurdle to expecting it, and expecting to overcome it. There’s a sobering humanity to the scene as well, in realizing her story is unfolding somewhere, today, to someone.
"Never Rarely Sometimes Always" is rated PG-13 for disturbing/mature thematic content, language, some sexual references and teen drinking.
Starring: Sidney Flanigan, Talia Ryder, Theodore Pellerin
Directed by Eliza Hittman
2020
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