Nev­er Rarely Some­times Always

There are so many expe­ri­ences that, as a young woman, you chalk up to expe­ri­ence. Creepy boss­es and over-famil­iar co-work­ers; pushy male class­mates who will crit­i­cise you whether you sleep with them or not. We are instruct­ed to be qui­et, sto­ic, com­pli­ant, even in the face of sus­tained tor­ment. Eliza Hittman’s heart­break­ing Nev­er Rarely Some­times Always demon­strates these expec­ta­tions and sys­tems of oppres­sion in unflinch­ing detail.

In the UK, we’re lucky to still have health­care which is free at the point of access and pro­vides safe birth and ter­mi­na­tion options for those who need them. Things aren’t so sim­ple in the US, where access to abor­tion is deter­mined by state law, and sub­ject to dif­fer­ent rules and reg­u­la­tions depend­ing on where you live.

Sev­en­teen-year-old Autumn Callaghan (Sid­ney Flani­gan) realis­es this fol­low­ing her unplanned preg­nan­cy; her options in rur­al Penn­syl­va­nia are lim­it­ed and require parental con­sent. Wor­ried about how her fam­i­ly will react, she con­fides in her cousin Sky­lar (Talia Ryder) and the two set off on a jour­ney to New York City to get Autumn the help she needs.

Hittman’s work as a film­mak­er is always under­stat­ed, remark­able in its pre­ci­sion and hon­esty. Her pre­vi­ous fea­ture, Beach Rats, depict­ed inter­nalised homo­pho­bia with a sim­i­lar acute­ness, and Nev­er Rarely Some­times Always nails the dis­turb­ing real­i­ty of repro­duc­tive rights in Amer­i­ca today, high­light­ing how few options are avail­able to vul­ner­a­ble women and how the pro-life lob­by has become pow­er­ful to the extent many women feel no con­trol over their own body.

There’s a sense of dread which haunts the film as its teenage pro­tag­o­nists attempt to nav­i­gate the com­plex health­care sys­tem while also deal­ing with preda­to­ry men. But there’s not an ounce of melo­dra­ma to be found – this is stark, dev­as­tat­ing reality.

But despite the hard­ships endured by Autumn and Sky­lar, there is light in Hittman’s sto­ry too: she empha­sis­es the bond between the two girls, demon­strat­ing how essen­tial female friend­ship is to young women, par­tic­u­lar­ly when faced with a sit­u­a­tion as hope­less and unfair as theirs. Her eye for detail in cap­tur­ing how much com­mu­ni­ca­tion is per­formed not through words but through ges­tures, glances and touch cre­ates an authen­tic sense of ten­der­ness, while cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Hélène Lou­vart (who worked with Hittman on Beach Rats too) cre­ates an effort­less sense of real­ism with her cam­era, which lingers on moments of human decen­cy as well as despair.

It’s worth not­ing that Autumn’s jour­ney from Penn­syl­va­nia to New York, although fraught with dan­ger, is short rel­a­tive to those made by count­less teenage girls every day around the world; even then, mil­lions more are forced into unsafe abor­tions or attempts to self-ter­mi­nate, which can prove fatal. One only hopes that the peo­ple with the pow­er to change things for the bet­ter will see this film and take note, and that young women in sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tions will realise they do not have to endure this pain alone.