Autumn, seventeen, learns she is pregnant, but under Pennsylvania law, she cannot have an abortion without parental consent. Together with her cousin Skylar, she steals money from the supermarket, buys bus tickets, and travels to New York. Secretly from her parents and despite public condemnation, Autumn has to undergo a three-day medical procedure in this huge and hostile city, which the two provincial women explore with eyes full of amazement. Never Rarely Sometimes Always was premiered internationally at the Sundance Film Festival, where it took a Special Jury Award for Neo-Realism.
In her third film, director Eliza Hittman, who shoots coming of age dramas about awkward teens (It Felt Like Love, Beach Rats), with piercing sensitivity, addresses the theme of reproductive choice. Thanks to the total immersion in the inner world of the main protagonist, this chamber story about abortion turns into a self-cognition odyssey. Balancing between cinéma vérité and feature film, Hittman creates an intimate yet universal story of teenage pregnancy and a culture of sexual abuse.
Never Rarely Sometimes Always is an emphatically feminine movie, not only at the level of the two friends' mutual support (the breakthrough acting of debutantes Sidney Flanigan and Talia Ryder) but also in terms of production. Hittman's drama is a collaboration of many women, from indie rock diva Sharon Van Etten, who plays Autumn's mother, to experimental composer Julia Holter, the author of the film's hypnotic soundtrack. Its visual solution, inspired by Robert Bresson's cinema of gestures, is the achievement of one of the leading cinematographers of our time, Frenchwoman Hélène Louvart. The most incredible thing in the movie is probably the atmospheric footage of hands that steal, grab, operate, and save.
The screening is in English with Russian subtitles.
Never Rarely Sometimes Always
Dir. Eliza Hittman
UK, USA, 2020. 101 min. 16+