Review: Never Rarely Sometimes Always

Image courtesy of Focus Features.

"He makes me do things I don't want to do... he's got the power of love over me," sings Autumn (Sidney Flanigan), a 17-year-old high school student from Pennsylvania, during a talent show in the opening scene of Eliza Hittman's powerful "Never Rarely Sometimes Always," another chronicle from the director about working class teens whose sexuality ends up causing them trouble. Autumn's performance - accompanied by her guitar playing - stands out among the other students in the talent show, most of whom are male-female duets that seem like numbers out of "Grease." And we'll later learn during the film's most standout moment that the words she's singing from The Exciters' "He Got the Power" have particular relevance.

The other students' performances aren't the only thing seemingly out of time in Autumn's small town, where men have all the power - from the slut shaming student who calls Autumn out during her performance to the grocery store manager who fondles the hands of Autumn and Skylar (Talia Ryder), Autumn's dedicated cousin who works with her at the supermarket, and Autumn's jerk of a stepfather, who plays with the family dog, calling it a "slut," and acts strangely hostile toward his stepdaughter.

Skylar senses something is off with Autumn - and she's right. Autumn is pregnant, 18 weeks in fact, but told 10 weeks for nefarious purposes by a local women's clinic worker, who also shows Autumn videos to dissuade her from considering an abortion. Autumn realizes that if she's going to have the procedure done, it'll have to be away from her hometown, so Skylar steals some money from their grocery store and the two trek to New York City, where they'll spend a two-day odyssey that plays like a surprisingly warmer version of the Romanian masterpiece "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days."

During their bus trip to New York, the girls meet a young man named Jasper (Theodore Pellerin) who insists they meet him while they're in the five boroughs, most likely to party. Jasper is the type of faux "nice guy" who pretends to be munificent - and indeed helps the duo later in the picture, but at a price - but takes liberties he shouldn't: for example, he's quick to place his hands on Skylar to her obvious discomfort.

Once in New York City, Autumn goes through the machine of bureaucracy as she attempts to get an abortion - the clinic workers are much more supportive and warm toward her, but the stringent rules force her and Skylar to end up staying two nights in the city without an obvious place to rest their heads.

In the film's tour de force sequence, the reserved Autumn's mask finally comes off during an unbroken close-up shot as she talks to a social worker, who tells her she can make one of four responses to a series of questions - "never," "rarely," "sometimes" or "always" - regarding her relationships, sexuality and home life. There's more characterization in that one scene - and we learn more about Autumn's troubles - than in what you'd typically discover during an entire movie. It's an incredibly powerful moment, made the more so by Flanigan's terrific performance. The father of her baby is never actually revealed, but some unsettling possibilities arise during the conversation.

Another scene that leaves a mark is during Autumn's procedure when her sympathetic social worker holds her hand while she's on the operating table. This is thematically coupled in a deeply moving manner during a sequence late in the film when Autumn takes her cousin's hand at a moment when she really needs it.

For a movie about such harrowing subject matter, "Never Rarely Sometimes Always" is often warm and lovely, due to the fact that the picture often focuses on the friendship between Autumn and Skylar and the actresses' camaraderie is so convincing. I've admired the technique and craft behind Hittman's other pictures - "It Felt Like Love" and "Beach Rats" - but this is the first time that I felt genuinely invested in her characters. This is the best film I've seen so far in 2020. As to whether the film hits the mark, the answer I'd choose among the four words in its title would be, nearly, "always."