Never Rarely Sometimes Always (2020)
dir. Eliza Hittman
Rated: PG-13
image: ©2020 Focus Features
Never Rarely Sometimes Always (NRSA) is the kind of stripped down, deeply personal filmmaking that is a worthy successor to the independent cinema of someone like John Cassavetes. That director’s work on films like A Woman Under the Influence, Faces, and Shadows emphasized naturalistic performances and a gritty realism born of their limited budgets. In Never Rarely Sometimes Always, director Eliza Hittman focuses on a young girl with few options and little support while dealing with an unwanted pregnancy. The film is filled with grace and compassion; it’s a luminous example of humanism in art.
Autumn Callahan is seventeen years old and thinks she might be pregnant. She confirms her suspicions by going to a crisis pregnancy center, where a staff member gives her an over the counter pregnancy test, which she calls a “self-administered test.” Hittman trusts her audience enough to not explicitly tell us how these centers masquerade as medical facilities. She shows us by way of the not-so-subtle techniques these mostly fundamental-Christian funded facilities operate. They don’t offer medical services beyond a test you could buy at a local drug store or a sonogram machine, which doesn’t technically require a certification to operate.
The woman – almost certainly not a doctor – who performs Autumn’s sonogram describes “the most magical sound you will ever hear” as the teen listens to the heartbeat. She tells Autumn about the beautiful child growing inside of her. Just in case her efforts to tip the scales in favor of convincing Autumn to keep her baby aren’t enough, as she is about to walk out, clearly in distress, the clinic employee asks her a question. “Are you abortion minded?” Autumn says yes. The woman asks her to sit down so she can show Autumn a video about the horrors and evil of abortion. We later learn that the clinic isn’t above outright lying to their “patients” to ensure that every pregnant person who walks through their door gives birth.
A quick Google search informs Autumn that her home state, Pennsylvania, has made obtaining her constitutionally protected right to an abortion as hard as possible. As a minor, she is required to obtain parental consent before she can have the procedure. With no money and little family support, Autumn doesn’t know what to do. Her father (or perhaps he’s her stepfather, it’s never made clear) is more concerned with sexualizing the family dog, talking about what a slut she is, than he is with offering parental guidance.
She tells her cousin, Skylar, about her situation. Skylar impulsively steals some cash from her till at the grocery store where both girls work – and where they are both subjected to the depraved sexual advances of their scumbag manager – and they get on a bus headed for New York City so Autumn can get an abortion.
Cinematographer Hélène Louvart’s photography gives NRSA a documentary feel. Her style is a wonderful complement to the low-budget aesthetic of the picture. It puts us in Autumn’s headspace, makes us feel a part of her world. It’s also, in its way, starkly beautiful. There are moments of sublime imagery, as when the girls are riding on the bus to New York. The bus passes through several tunnels, which causes the screen to alternate between complete blackness and the harsh light falling on Autumn’s face as she looks out the window.
On the bus, a young man named Jasper hits on Skylar, inviting both she and Autumn to a concert in New York City. Hittman’s screenplay emphasizes the constant bombardment women must put up with from men. Every single man we see – from the boy who shouts “slut” at Autumn in the opening minutes of the movie as she performs in a school talent show, to the man who starts touching himself in front of Autumn on the New York subway – seeks to assert his control over women’s bodies. It might be the least subtle aspect of the movie, but in Hittman’s hands, it feels nauseously true to life.
That theme comes to a dramatic and devastating climax two-thirds into Never Rarely Sometimes Always. In a shattering scene centered around a long single shot, a counselor at the Planned Parenthood in New York asks Autumn a series of questions. Off-camera, the counselor asks things like, “Has your romantic partner ever made you do something sexually that you didn’t want to do?” After each question, the counselor slowly repeats Autumn’s choices: “Never. Rarely. Sometimes. Always.”
We stare into actor Sidney Flanigan’s face – making, incredibly, her acting debut in NRSA – as Autumn completely breaks down. Her tough exterior dissolves as she processes each question; we can only guess that perhaps she is realizing for the first time just how hellish the men in her life have treated her.
Hittman populated her entire film with fresh faces that give a naturalistic, totally believable feel to NRSA. To go back to the documentary aesthetic, it feels as though the director plucked these actors off the street to be in her movie. The end result has a delicate sort of verisimilitude.
We never learn in NRSA who the father of Autumn’s baby is. It might be the boy who yelled slut at her in the middle of a packed auditorium. It’s possible her sleazy father (which, again, might actually be her stepfather) has abused her. It’s never made explicit, but it’s hard not to get that feeling from him. It’s possible the father of her baby might be someone we never see on screen.
The point at the heart of the compassionate and empathetic Never Rarely Sometimes Always is that Autumn knows and is sure she wants to terminate the pregnancy. The movie makes its case in a true-to-life, non-polemical examination of one girl’s struggle to obtain the medical care she’s entitled to, and that only she should have a say in. Until we trust women with that decision, every law and underhanded attempt to deprive them of making it for themselves will only cause more suffering and desperation.
Why it got 4.5 stars:
Never Rarely Sometimes Always could easily be categorized as just a message movie, but it’s so much more than that. Hittman’s direction and Flanigan’s performance combine to make it heartbreaking and human. It’s a delicate story of hardship and, ultimately, perseverance.
Things I forgot to mention in my review, because, well, I'm the Forgetful Film Critic:
- There’s a palpable sense throughout the entire movie that at any moment, something could go horribly wrong for Autumn and Skylar. I found myself trying to will them to get through their journey unscathed.
- I mentioned it in the main review, but it bears repeating. The “Never Rarely Sometimes Always” scene, when she answers the New York clinic questionnaire, is pulverizing. It’s an early candidate for best scene of the year (if I were to make such a year-end list).
- If you take nothing else away from the movie, it should at the least frustrate you to realize the number of hoops a woman has to jump through, even in supposedly liberal New York, in order to get access to a perfectly regular medical procedure. It’s nearly impossible for women with limited funds.
Close encounters with people in movie theaters:
- Should I change this subheading? Week six of the coronavirus lock-down. NRSA is one of those films that got pushed to streaming services early since its theatrical exhibition wasn’t possible. It’s twenty dollars to rent, which is pricey for essentially a one time viewing, but it’s so worth it.