Never Rarely Sometimes Always

Directed by: Eliza Hittman
Written by: Eliza Hittman
Starring: Sidney Flanigan, Talia Ryder, Théodore Pellerin, Sharon Van Etten, Drew Seltzer, Ryan Eggold
Drama - 101 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 2 April 2020

Writer/director Eliza Hittman is so adept at making the audience empathize with her 17 year-old main character, it has me convinced the hardest thing in the world is to be a young girl who must make choices. Society is against them. Every external actor on Earth appears to have an agenda toward girls they deem vulnerable, usually malicious, but sometimes understanding. Hittman wants to show us the process of abortion, from the first realization there is a pregnancy all the way through the end of a particular decision line. She opts not to show us a girl with resources or a supportive family/social environment where options are easy and situations can be fixed. The girl front-and-center in Never Rarely Sometimes Always is poor, from rural America, and is boxed in from almost all sides.

We don’t know very much about Autumn (Sidney Flanigan). We follow her through various solitary routines, but we only know her relationship with her step-father is treacherous, mom pretends everything is normal, her peers feel free to slut-shame her, and while there are subtle hints and innuendos here and there, we don’t know who the father is. Autumn’s cousin and best friend, Skylar (Talia Ryder), is the only person to recognize Autumn is in trouble and she is ready to act.

Hittman did her homework and it propels the film with an immediate, practical cascade of “what do we do now” situations. Kids can get bus tickets to New York City, but they cannot afford a hotel room there. More and more women make the trek to the nearest big city due to increased abortion restrictions and lack of access in their home states. They wind up sleeping on benches waiting for clinics to open or to undergo the second half of their operations.

Pro-life run pregnancy centers cater to the scared, uninformed teenager with no options. They show grotesque videos, share horror stories, and in Autumn’s case, even lie to her about how far along her pregnancy is in order to trap her. Rural Pennsylvania’s cloistered mining towns are not there to support girls like Autumn and Skylar. The girls work at a local grocery store and endure persistent, sleazy come-ons from old men and grotesque sexual harassment from their boss. Jobs are scarce even for the educated and employable in town; therefore, who will the girls complain to?

As the brains of the duo, Skylar gets the girls to New York where navigating knotty subway lines, lugging a suitcase, and laying low to avoid the radar of scam artists and even worse proves a minute-by-minute struggle. Autumn’s abortion clinic interview provides meaning to the film’s title as she haltingly offers one word answers to the counselor’s intimate questions about her sexual activity and ability to make willing choices about it. It is a heavy scene which tells us more during its deafening silences than from Autumn’s answers.

The film’s subject matter runs the risk of running into after school special territory - “Watch out girls, this could happen you too!” But Hittman is far too adept a filmmaker to fall into any such mundane traps. She shows us the system how it is, not how it should be. Hittman is also careful not to overdo it or lead us into unrealistic territory. It is all too believable there are thousands of Autumns out there and this is the shadowy world they must navigate due to a cacophony of decisions made by countless figures they will never meet. It is an indictment of how Autumn’s situation should never have gotten to this point.

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