Never Rarely Sometimes Always

Eliza Hittman’s Never Rarely Sometimes Always begins with a sort of 1950’s-themed high school talent show: There is an Elvis impersonator, and an a capella trio, and then a young woman named Autumn (Sidney Flanigan) playing an acoustic guitar and singing. Autumn is dressed like an ensemble member in Grease, but her song feels more modern and personal and the sequence – she falters briefly after a classmate calls out - works to define Autumn as a character out of step in her own life. Never Rarely Sometimes Always is a film of stark social realism and a terrific emotional restraint. In telling the story of one modest young woman’s journey to shape her own life, Hittman’s film speaks volumes about the ways women move through the world and the obstacles that are put in front of them.

The day after the talent show we follow Sidney to a health clinic in her small Pennsylvania town. Her pregnancy test is positive, and from what we’ve seen of her home life it is obvious that her father (Ryan Eggold) won’t lead with support when he finds out. Sidney’s only ally is her cousin Skylar (Talia Ryder), who lifts money from her employer so that she can accompany Autumn to New York for an abortion. (Autumn is 17, and under state law she can’t have the procedure at home without parental consent.) The time in New York is treated with a kind of rigorous empathy. Hittman’s camera stays close to the two cousins – both young actors have very expressive faces – and we’re meant to be moved by the plight of the two young women stuck in the City as the trip takes longer than expected. Yet there’s also great specificity in the depiction of the bureaucratic process that Autumn must go through before getting the help she needs. Autumn is never judged by anyone she meets; all of the clinic workers are professional but yet distanced in a way that doesn’t really help a teenager who has no real support system. Hittman holds the camera on Flanigan in the film’s best scene, a long take in which Autumn is asked questions about her sexual history. (This sequence gives the film its title.) Flanigan is excellent here as she is throughout, playing Autumn with amazing naturalness and never coming off as above the character. Earlier there is a lovely, subtle moment when Autumn turns away from the monitor after seeing her child on a sonogram. The play of conflicting emotions across Flanigan’s face is just right.

The most harrowing part of Never Really Sometimes Always involves Autumn and Skylar’s encounter with a young man (Theodore Pellerin) named Jasper who they meet on a bus and then later again later. Jasper isn’t openly threatening, but he’s interested in Skylar and his banality hides a manipulative side. The two cousins come in contact with a few men over the course of the film, with Jasper being the most significant, and they treat Autumn and Skylar with a kind of harassing indifference. These scenes – Jasper repeatedly inviting Skylar to a show, a grocery store manager coming on to her – add to the sense of the film as a sort of trial. Autumn and Skylar are where they are because of male behavior, but there is no sense that men will be held to account. We never meet the father of Autumn’s child, and in that clinic questionnaire scene it’s Autumn who is traumatized again when being asked about her choices and experiences. Hittman understands this sad irony, a bug not a feature of life for American women, and she has crafted a film that doesn’t so much tell a story as reveal a truth.