CINEMA
Limited Choice
A young woman’s journey to claim her reproductive rights
BY STEVE ERICKSON
Eliza Hittman’s “Never
Rarely Sometimes Always”
is built around the
quest of Autumn (Sidney
Flanigan), a 17-year-old girl from
Pennsylvania, to get an abortion in
New York. It wastes no time arguing
about the morality of the procedure,
instead showing why it’s
a necessity for Autumn. American
TV and movies have long acted
as though abortion doesn’t exist.
When they haven’t, Alexander
Payne’s 1996 comedy “Citizen
Ruth” engaged in centrist both-sidesism
regarding the debate around
it, while “Juno” romanticized teenage
pregnancy as though rejecting
the choice of abortion went along
with a hip fondness for indie rock
and Dario Argento fi lms.
“Never Rarely Sometimes Always”
is distributed by a division
of Comcast. Fifteen years ago,
they might’ve been afraid this fi lm
would be too controversial. Faced
with a conservative backlash that
threatens Roe v. Wade and a resurgence
of anger against right-wing
men controlling women’s bodies, its
feminism is now a selling point.
Feeling sick, Autumn goes to
the doctor and learns that she’s
pregnant. Exploring her options,
she realizes she would need to get
parental consent for an abortion in
her home state. Although the fi lm
never explains why, she doesn’t tell
her parents what’s going on but
confi des in her cousin and friend
Skylar (Talia Ryder), who works
with her as a cashier. After several
awful false starts, they decide to
take the bus to a Planned Parenthood
clinic in Brooklyn. They meet
a friendly boy, Jasper (Théodore
Pellerin), along the way. But Autumn’s
quest risks getting derailed
at every turn, especially due to its
demands of time and money.
All three Hittman fi lms depict
young people heading toward a
maturity the fi lms leave it up to us
to imagine. They go through traumatic
rites of passage; in “Beach
Rats,” a closeted gay man helps
set up an act of violence that may
Sidney Flanigan in Eliza Hittman’s “Never Rarely Sometimes Always,” which opens March 13 at the
Angelika and The Landmark at 57 West.
end in murder. That fi lm ends with
his deliberately unreadable howl.
“Never Rarely Sometimes Always”
celebrates the patient, steady determination
of Autumn and Skylar.
Despite Autumn’s pregnancy, they
just want to get on with their lives,
and they are willing to do anything
they need to do so. Flanigan and
Ryder’s performances are often
silent to the point of blankness.
The fi lm has little dialogue, and
much of its talk is directly about
the medical procedures Autumn is
seeking.
“Beach Rats” had a very distinctive
look and mood, as though
Larry Clark had directed “Kids”
after watching a festival of Claire
Denis fi lms. Hittman’s direction
expressed a female gaze while trying
FOCUS FEATURES
to see the world through the
eyes of her gay male protagonist,
objectifying her cast of fi t, shirtless
young men. Cinematographer
Hélène Louvart shot both, but she
gives “Never Rarely Sometimes Always”
a far more toned-down look.
In fact, its vision takes its cues from
the hero’s name. The color scheme
is brown and drab, with few bright
colors sticking out. It refl ects a
world devoid of joy or excitement.
The grainy cinematography sticks
close to the actors’ faces.
A middle-aged man working at a
supermarket hits on Autumn and
invites her to a party. When the two
girls are riding on the subway in
New York, another man goes much
further, reaching inside his pants
to masturbate in front of them.
Jasper turns out to be harmless,
but when he fi rst approaches the
girls he might well have turned out
to be another horny creep.
The fi lm’s centerpiece is an extended
take where Autumn is interviewed
about the experiences
that led her to get an abortion. It
gets its title from this scene, where
a Planned Parenthood worker asks
her if she has been physically or
sexually assaulted by her partner
“never rarely sometimes always.”
Lurking moralists should listen to
her answers and realize that males
didn’t respect her right to consent
or allow her to use birth control but
have created a world where getting
an abortion is akin to becoming a
character in a video game’s most
diffi cult mode.
Like its look, the tone of “Never
Rarely Sometimes Always” is
muted. Calling it an ode to female
friendship would be banal. But the
fi lm points out how American society
has been set up deliberately
so that young women have few defenders
except each other. Instead
of blandly hailing a generic “right
to choose,” it shows the role class
plays in making abortion available.
Autumn doesn’t have much
money, but if she had just a little
less her story would be much more
troubled.
If this sounds like a sermon,
Hittman’s fi lm is far from it. It
knows how to make its points subtly
(as in the references to the false
nostalgia for an idealized past in
its opening scene, set at a talent
show where Autumn performs a
song from the early 1960s). Like
“Beach Rats,” “Never Rarely Sometimes
Always” closes at the start
of a new journey. At least Autumn
is able to fi gure out her needs and
stand up for them, despite a hostile
world.
NEVER RARELY SOMETIMES ALWAYS
| Directed by Eliza Hittman
| Focus Features | Opens Mar. 13
| Angelika Film Center, 18 W. Houston
St. at Mercer St.’ angelikafi lmcenter.
com/nyc | The Landmark at
57 West, 657 W. 57th St.; landmarktheatres.
com
March 12 - March 25, 2 34 020 | GayCityNews.com
/GayCityNews.com
