If resilience is a positive American trait, then women seeking out abortions are the most American among us. Never Rarely Sometimes Always, the newest film from Eliza Hittman, is a portrait of two of those women, Autumn and Skylar (Sidney Flanigan and Talia Ryder, respectively), as they struggle to quickly and quietly get rid of an unwanted pregnancy.
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17-year-old Autumn, already ostracized in her rural Pennsylvanian community, doesn’t know where to turn after discovering that she’s pregnant. She’s fearful to open up to her mom and stepdad Ted (Sharon Van Etten and Ryan Eggold), as she fears retaliation or simply cool disregard. Her town can’t offer her medical help as the only place available is a crisis pregnancy center, which gives Autumn an over-the-counter test and an inaccurate sonogram. And she doesn’t get paid enough from her part-time job, where her creepy and controlling boss (Drew Seltzer) constantly harasses her, to afford much of a solution. Autumn’s cousin Skylar, who’s the same age as her, watches her back and shields her from the worst of the abuse from the community’s men. Skylar is also the more aggressively proactive of the two, and through some clever looting manages to sweep Autumn away to New York City to achieve a legal abortion at Planned Parenthood. But the Big Apple comes with its own set of problems, men-related and otherwise, as the girls are forced to concede to mounds of bureaucratic red tape in order to achieve their mission. It becomes a struggle against time (as well as dwindling funds) to maintain their safety, their health, and their privacy in the boisterous metropolis – and the enveloping world at-large. There are times when Never Rarely Sometimes Always feels like it’s hitting the unexpected-pregnancy story beats with too much ease. Anyone who’s seen things as heavy as 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days or as lighthearted as Obvious Child can probably guess where things are going or why they’re turning out as they do. But this is less an exercise in thematic obviousness as it is an attack on cultural obliviousness, and how these very real struggles on the whole are too frequently ignored. Nearly everywhere Autum and Skylar turn, there is a man who is actively trying to take advantage of them. Even if there isn’t explicit manipulation occurring, it’s propagated through weighted behavior. The diminutive and patronizing language that Ted (Ryan Eggold) uses while doing something as innocuous as petting the family dog, while Autumn herself becomes visually distraught, speaks bounds to the ingrained sexism within everyday dialogue (and/or Ted’s willful ignorance towards it). But there are women propping up this broken system, too. Autumn’s trip to her town’s crisis pregnancy center proves unhelpful (“Isn’t that a test that you can get at the supermarket?”), inaccurate (misjudging her pregnancy’s actual progress by nearly two months), and patronizing (the clinician showing her anti-choice propaganda after asking if she’s “abortion-minded”). Even when she gets to New York City with the professionals at Planned Parenthood, she’s forced to make last-minute decisions and face temporary homelessness in order for the procedures to be performed properly – something she was not made unaware of from the outset. Hittman makes Autumn and Skylar’s hardships impossible not to notice, and by doing so lays bare the misogyny built into the American healthcare system – and American society – on the whole. Autumn and Skylar are quiet, reserved, and even a bit moody, but they are but a reflection of the coldness of their surrounding world. Their self-reliance is not out of choice but out of necessity, as society has deemed their struggle unworthy of any easy solution. Flanigan and Ryder both portray this minimalist angst quite well, while also exhibiting an exorbitant amount of strength to keep from cracking under pressure. Flanigan, in her debut role, pulls off a bravura long take towards the end of the second act (a scene from which the film gets its name) as she fights not to cry while answering traumatic questions for a social worker (Kelly Chapman). These feelings of suppression are exacerbated by Louvart’s washed-out, naturally-lit cinematography, which shrouds everything in shadows and voids it all of vibrancy. Places like clinics and doctors’ offices – which should be welcoming and provide comfort – are dingy, discouraging, and dark. Holter’s somber score of slow, swelling beats also adds to this dreary melancholy. A lot of comparisons can be (and have already aforementionedly been) drawn between Never Rarely Sometimes Always and Cristian Mungiu’s 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, and rightfully so, as both films examine the hardships of women as they struggle to achieve bodily autonomy and reproductive freedom. And while it might be easy for modern-day Americans to disconnect from Mungiu’s shocking portrayal of late-Eastern Bloc brutality via a difference of time periods and political scriptures, it’s harder to do that with Hittman’s vision because of its immediate, blunt modernity. This isn’t a story that can be excused as happening in another country or at another time, and it can’t be written off as an “expected” outcome of a communist dictatorship. This is sexist systemic oppression that is happening in 21st-century capitalist America, a haven for economic freedom that’s ironically infatuated with free will. Autumn’s story is but one of many in a society that thrives on subjugation through administrative and sexual violence. Hittman is broadcasting this at an unavoidable frequency and charging you with complacency if you’re still trying to drown it out. Never Rarely Sometimes Always is not a feel-good film, but it is, unfortunately, a very necessary one. 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