Movie Review - Never Rarely Sometimes Always

Director: Eliza Hittman  
Genre: Drama
Runtime: 84 minutes
Year: 2020
Starring: Sidney Flanigan, Talia Ryder, Théodore Pellerin

Description: A pair of teenage girls (Sidney Flanigan, Talia Ryder) in rural Pennsylvania travel to New York City to seek out medical help after an unintended pregnancy.

Review: In a conservative town in Pennsylvania, Autumn fins out she is pregnant. The teenage girl is having a hard time, with a father who show more love for the dog than for his daughter, who he thinks is just a grumpy child. Her classmates and peers usually treat her unkindly and give her disdainful looks. She knows nothing as certain as not wanting to become a mother. But she is insecure as how she should manage it. The only one who helps her unconditionally is her friend and niece Skylar. But how much can the two teenage girls do?
How little the system can do and how restrictive the American system can be for those on the wrong side of limitless possibilities is nowhere more obvious than at Autumns local abortion clinic. The suspicion that she is pregnant is confirmed by the attending physician with a pregnancy test from the supermarket, after which she is shown a video tape in which a white man lists the harmful effects of an abortion. At home, however, they are not allowed to know anything about the pregnancy and soon the possibilities seem exhausted within the limits of the law.
Autumn and Skylar flee to liberal New York, where an abortion can be discussed and the questions asked are more humane. But here too the system and Autumn turn out to be like water and fire and the somewhat less introverted Skylar has to use all her unconditional love to prevent the personal drama from becoming a dramatic disaster. The girls undergo the days largely in silence, every new day with new problems. It’s only a few days, with only a few problems, but they seem endless and insurmountable.
“Never Rarely Sometimes Always” manages to merge these two themes, the big imposed system and the small personal suffering, in a poignant way. Absolute climax and low point is the scene from which the film derives its title. A shot that seems to last for minutes in which a visibly broken Autumn disrupts the preconceptions of a system. A well-meaning care worker has to ask her a number of prescribed questions, instructing her to reduve any sexual trauma to an answer on a four-point scale: never, rarely, sometimes, always.
Add to this the fact that the dup in the leading role is taking the first step in the film world and the impersonal fluorescent light in which the underground subway stations an above-ground abortion clinic bathe and the film becomes an indictment of the system. A system from which you can’t win, but where you can only do your best to limit your loss, no matter what you want and where you come from.
It's a raw, realistic and impressive film. Probably a movie that will be overlooked, so if you have the change to see it, do!

Rating: 4 / 5