It’s not until about the twenty minute mark of Never Rarely Sometimes Always, about a week after Autumn Callahan (Sidney Flanigan) discovers she’s pregnant, that the inevitable “A” word comes up, and it’s used very sparingly even afterwards. Abortion is a taboo subject in her small Pennsylvanian town, and the shame of undergoing the procedure would be overwhelming -if she was allowed it at all. None of this is outright stated, in fact the film is extremely subdued, the introverted Autumn not speaking much, even when alone with her best friend. But it’s all unquestionably true by the imagery, body language, and attitude of the place. This is not a community comfortable in the twenty-first century. So Autumn has to go elsewhere.
Never Rarely Sometimes Always is a stupendous film, the third feature from indie darling filmmaker Eliza Hittman. In some ways it’s quite reminiscent of Jasmin Mozaffari’s Firecrackers, in that it too follows a pair of girls wanting to escape their repressive small town with an undercurrent of toxic masculinity dictating their lives and choices -only here they do manage to leave in fairly short order. Autumn, with the help of her loyal cousin Skylar (Talia Ryder) and some cash stolen from the grocery store they work at (run by a sexual predator), runs off to New York where she doesn’t require parental consent to access a safe abortion. It’s a story you’ve no doubt heard before, a disappointingly common resort for women living in areas with strict laws or poor planned parenthood conditions.
The film is shot with a documentary-like precision, muted colours, and a notable minimalism. So much of the characters’ feelings, lives, and even plot developments are communicated through expressions, edits, and framing rather than dialogue or explicit commentary.The two girls never even talk about what they’re doing until the end, and only barely then. It’s understood to be a very personal matter and simply Skylars’ support is enough to indicate she grasps on some level the necessity of Autumn’s choice. The bitter honesty and urgency of their trek is almost uncomfortably palpable, it’s so divorced from typical movie rules, the audience feels the same anxiety Autumn does to get this over with quickly, when she keeps having to be waylaid in the course of completing the operation and when the privacy of it is threatened, whether through follow-up phone calls from her local crisis pregnancy centre, or the shaming crowd of anti-choice demonstrators outside of the New York clinic.
Obviously your own views on the subject at hand is going to taint your experience with this film somewhat. As someone who believes every woman should have the right to a safe abortion if she so chooses, I can’t deny it affected mine -particularly in the infuriatingly condescending staffer of the shabby centre Autumn visits initially, where she is extremely misled about her pregnancy and abortion itself. But in its efforts to dispel the lies put forth by such institutions, the film really works as an educational tool on the abortion process as removed from the politics of its text as it is possible to be. There’s a lot of clinical language and a much higher degree of professionalism on display once Autumn is in the city. The interviews and discussions put to Autumn could be transcripts, and Hittman goes out of her way to emphasize both the safety of the treatment and the kindness of the councilors, as well as the repeated confirmations of consent. Effectively, what the movie does is strip away any drama surrounding the process of abortion, disproving the horror fictions circulated by anti-choice zealots, and in fact makes the whole thing rather mundane -just another essential medical procedure, like having ones’ appendix out.
The title Never Rarely Sometimes Always comes from the series of optional answers for patients when posed with personal questions relating to their sexual history. The scene when Autumn undergoes this is the movies’ rawest, revealing what was earlier hinted at based on a handful of interactions. This film is about more than just abortion after all, Hittman wants to convey the multitude of ways young girls are repressed by outmoded values and environments of unaccountability. From the opening scene, where a school singing performance is jeered at by a troupe of boys and a single wordless interaction she has with one of them afterwards, to the way she’s treated by her insensitive step-father (Ryan Eggold), and once again that pedophilic manager, Autumn (and Skylar of course) is seen to inhabit a world in which her agency has no meaning to the people around her -men, but also women such as her mum (Sharon Van Etten) and the CPC worker. Much like in Firecrackers, it’s a world where her freedom is restricted, where she has to dangerously give herself a nose piercing and sees her only provincial alternative to not carrying to term as a painful attempt to induce a miscarriage. But even out of Pennsylvania, the girls are still mere objects, particularly for a boy (Théodore Pellerin) who won’t take the hint that Skylar is not interested in him. In so few words, the film encapsulates an experience of modern American girlhood more truthful than just about any other contemporary coming-of-age movie.
The young actors are great. Flanigan is a revelation of subtlety and such a profound naturalism, every ounce of anxiety, confusion, pain and subliminal fear and desperation is as tangible as if you knew this girl personally. Ryder is marvellous too, and the girls’ unspoken but trusting bond may be the films’ backbone. But Hittman deserves credit for bringing it out and for bringing this story to fruition, one so simple and true to life it’s astonishing it hasn’t been done yet (that I know of). Never, Rarely, Sometimes, Always is one of those vital movies that will hopefully enlighten the still turbulently misunderstood conversation about reproductive freedom. And maybe, it’ll even change a few minds.
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