There are certain movies the recentAdam SandlerhitUncut Gemsis now popularly classed among them that keep you under high stress until the credits roll.
Eliza Hittmans (Beach Rats) Sundance dramaNever Rarely Sometimes Always, about a teenage girl trying to get an abortion, will likely make you nervous and uneasy throughout, but there are flashes of respite.
And all of these safe moments, where you’re free to finally take a breath, take place inside a Planned Parenthood.
Focus Features
Sidney Flanigan a remarkable discovery stars as Autumn, an intense 17-year-old girl living in rural, conservative Pennsylvania, who discovers early in the film that shes pregnant.
Terrified of her affectionate mother and casually cruel stepfather finding out, and receiving little understanding from the ostensibly well-meaning doctor at her local clinic, she confides in her sympathetic cousin Skylar (Talia Ryder), and the girls hatch a plan.
Running on desperation and stolen cash, they take a bus to New York, where Autumn wont need parental consent to get an abortion, and where they have no one to turn to and no place to stay.
Writer-director Hittman resists the urge, again and again, to lean into sentiment, and the film succeeds as brilliantly as it does because she is vigilant not to fall down easy traps of romanticizing or wallowing in Autumns misfortune nor, it is worth noting, does she judge it.
Theres no need to heavily editorialize here; Hittman is an assured enough filmmaker to portray this drama honestly and non-manipulatively, trusting her audience to interpret the complicated heartbreak of Autumns predicament without having to explain it to them.
The details of this pregnancys conception are irrelevant to the issue at hand, and Hittman doesnt distract us with them, revealing only what we need to know but sharing little, terrible hints at so much else.
Flanigan and Ryder, both in their big-screen debuts, are highly natural actors and a compelling pair, visibly bonded by the shared indignities and unique vulnerability of teenage girlhood.
The devastating scene that gives the film its title, and Flanigans astonishing performance in it, is worth the price of admission alone.
Never Rarelytakes place in what is at once a magical, far-off New York, where Autumn and Skylar float through neon-lit nights playing arcade dance games and sharing pastries, and a stark, too-tangible reality.
One particularly effective unit comes in the form of the girls unwieldy shared suitcase that never leaves their side as they navigate a labyrinth of sidewalks; Hittman takes the time to let us feel the weight of it, lingering on them struggling to get it on the subway, up some stairs, onto a table and thats not to mention the other burdens, more space-efficient but no less heavy, following them at the same time.
The film premiered at theSundance Film Festivalon the same day as the March for Life in Washington, where Donald Trump became the first sitting president to speak at the annual anti-abortion event.
A womans right to choose is one of the defining issues of our time;Never Rarely Sometimes Alwaysis an urgent, extraordinary film for this very moment.A
Never Rarely Sometimes Alwayshits theaters March 13.
