FYC: Never Rarely Sometimes Always
Saturday, February 20, 2021 at 5:14PM
by Nick Taylor
Never Rarely Sometimes Always is the 2020 film I've watched the most times this past year. The story of a 17-year-old girl fleeing her small town for several days to get an abortion in the city is perhaps not the kind of tale that one expects to dive into over and over again. But few films have gripped me quite like this one has. Of all the American films contending for an Oscar nomination, this and First Cow are by far the two I most want to see recognized somewhere, anywhere, everywhere. It’s always rough when the televised awards start culling from critics prize winners for their own lineups, and even harder when the whole goddamn process is strung out for two extra months. Will key nominations from the exclusive, rigorously discerning Critics Choice Association help kick it back into the conversation? Or did writer/director Eliza Hittman missing at WGA signal the end of the road? Maybe the Indie Spirits will be the last time we see this crew up for an award, but until proven otherwise, here’s my pitch on behalf of this marvelous film in any and all categories available to it.
There’s nowhere to start like the beginning, which in this case is the most internally idiosyncratic scene of the film. Never Rarely Sometimes Always begins with a talent show of sorts, as student dress up in ‘50s Teen Outfits and sing & dance to Elvis...
The first and only student we see break from this trend is Autumn (Sidney Flanigan), who belts out a slowed down, soul-bearing cover of The Exciters, “He’s Got The Power” on the guitar. It’s the only song that defies the pastiche preceding it, creatively reworking a pretty energetic bop into a sad, mournful reckoning. The sheer emotion in Autumn’s voice makes this choice feel even riskier and more personal than the other acts. So of course some guy shouts something nasty about her, and she freezes, visibly shaken as she collects herself to finish the song.
So why is it here? Are we meant to expect this is setting up a different conflict than the one Never Rarely ends up being about? Is this when Autumn decides to go to an OBGYN and see if she’s pregnant? Or did she already know? Was she already planning to skip school the next day?
For all that Hittman’s script has been recognized for starting at the beginning and finishing at the end, the actual narrative seems almost entirely built on capturing the incongruities of Autumn’s life and juxtaposing them with these fairly significant events. I think this is why the film starts with her performance at school, staying with her through the awkward conversation with her family while they're out to dinner and the shit with those guys before she walks home alone, rather than immediately kicking off the plot. Never Rarely Sometimes Always isn’t just a polemical about a teen girl trying to get an abortion, but also a movie about traveling, about orienting yourself in a world with people whose intentions on you are mostly obvious and rarely trustworthy.
Part of what makes these early scenes in particular so engaging is that Hittman is able to present such a lived-in portrait of Autumn and her town without explicitly stating all that much about the nature of these relationships. So much of Never Rarely Sometimes Always is shaped by an emotional intuition derived from Autumn’s headspace, what we as the audience can guess just by looking at her and listening to her. Autumn’s perspective is the unequivocal center of the film, and Hélène Louvart’s grainy, subtly dexterous cinematography and Scott Cumming’s sharp, propulsive editing are able to tangibly dramatize her physical and emotional relationship to the spaces she moves through, the people she meets, and the intentions projected onto her body by herself and others. The tones of these encounters are so strong that we don’t need whole dialogue scenes spelling out how Autumn feels about them. Ryan Eggold casts such a distinct, instantly recognizable aura of the bitter, disdainful stepdad I didn’t clock that the film never reveals if this assumption was right.
Similarly, Autumn’s friendship with her cousin Skylar (Talia Ryder) is such an immediate boon for the character, and expresses so many lived-in dynamics over the course of the film, that the script doesn’t stop and establish it in any particular way. It just is, living and breathing and showing ever more sides of itself from the start.
Forgive me if all of that reads as contextualization for scenes I haven’t yet written about. The day after the talent show, Autumn skips school to go to an OBGYN and learns that she’s ten weeks pregnant. Her primary careworker at the clinic, an older woman whose every line of dialogue is equal parts delicate handling and passive aggressive “let me show you the right way to be”, instantly picks up Autumn’s interest in an abortion and tries to persuade her against it. Telling no one about her pregnancy, she tries some home remedies to abort the fetus, swallowing pills and punching her stomach. All that accomplishes is her throwing up at work, forcing her to reveal what she’s going through to Skylar. So, that night her cousin steals some money from her till, and the next morning the two hop on a bus to New York to get an abortion.
Plot is not necessarily the driving factor of the film, or at least not in the key that many a polemical would pitch itself at. A significant amount of Never Rarely Sometimes Always functions as a road movie, with Autumn and Skylar simply existing in the liminal spaces of long-distance public transportation and walking around a new city. It’s a massive tribute to Hittman, Louvart, and Commings for giving these extended scenes their own aesthetic and emotional textures, letting us feel how Autumn and Skylar are absorbing the banality, intrigue, danger, and exhaustion these spaces can so easily accommodate. This is, after all, an entirely new world for the pair of them. Louvart deploying a slightly canted angle that straightens itself out the first time the two step foot above ground in New York marvelously conveys how unmoored they are but also their own ability to right themselves against this new setting. But it takes no time at all for them to have to extend their timeframe, learning from an OBGYN that Autumn is actually eighteen weeks pregnant (not quite four months, three weeks, and two days, but close) and will have to undergo a more extensive, more expensive procedure at a different facility. And so begins another night on the subways.
Again, if this is a script that starts at the start and ends at the end, how many versions of this story do you think would devote so much time to their time hanging out in New York, shuttering between public spaces, confident that these scenes will feel instrumental to their story rather than incongruous? How many writers would omit almost everything before Autumn learns she’s pregnant and leave out her and Skylar’s fates when they return home? It’s an incredibly self-contained piece of writing, relying on as many scenes of wordless companionship and image-based narrative as it does scenes of piercing, faux-naturalistic dialogue. If anything about the film’s titular scene has been under praised, it’s that the impact of the social worker’s inescapably framed repetitions and Autumn’s fraught reaction is partially derived from how little talk is on either side of this scene. Autumn is pinned down by those words, unable to hide or lose herself in the face of their directness.
A term of praise that gets used a lot during awards season is “Such-and-such performance is their film!”, a phrase I don’t use verbatim but apply in spirit fairly often in my supporting actress pieces. I can’t think of a character or a leading actress this year for whom this particular phrase is more apt. Autumn’s body and the experiences she’s had in the world because of it are the primary site of conflict for Never Rarely Sometimes Always. Her shifts in posture, the degrees of withholding and honesty in her expressions, the curiosity all inform her film’s emotional inflections.
The austere, controlled construction from Hittman and her craftspeople certainly provide enough of a safety net that whoever plays Autumn will remain an affecting, impactful presence to the audience, but Flanigan rewards her film’s balance of tough insight and guarded withholding of information. Much like Charlie Plummer in Lean on Pete, Flanigan inhabits the watchful, sullen, sometimes surly key of a teenager who’s learned to protect herself by largely withdrawing from her environment, only breaking from this exterior when she’s either in her comfort zone or forcibly knocked out of it. The moments her exterior breaks are all the more upsetting because she’s clearly trying and failing to shore up her defenses. She’s not an exceptional woman against a unique danger but an ordinary teenager trying to save herself, universal without becoming cliched or sacrificing complexity and personal intrigue.
Still, Flanigan isn’t up there delivering one-take bravuras by herself the whole time. For a good amount of the film Talia Ryder is right by her side, modulating her own nuanced mixture of friendship, support, exasperation, and gutsy, front-line risk-taking in order to ensure Autumn can actually procure an abortion. Her Skylar radiates an openness at odds with Autumn’s more mature, sometimes distant attitude, and one she’s able to wield against men by way of her prevaricating, customer-service-interaction chattiness. She can’t always protect herself, but she’s able to get what she needs. We also get the sense of how often she’s stuck up for Autumn in the past, and how their bone-deep friendship makes this trip a ride-or-die act of protection they’d do for each other in a heartbeat while also being an extension of how they are in the world on any other day. Hittman’s strategy of building her film atop so many small, indelible images of everyday intimacy wouldn’t work if Flanigan and Ryder weren’t able to play such a normal, casually but irrefutably muscular friendship while eating each other’s food on the subway, quietly fighting about their lack of money, making up to each other even more quietly, cracking jokes, vibing next to each other while lost in their own thoughts, holding each other’s pinky fingers.
This last shot is very much the image that has stuck with me most from Never Rarely Sometimes Always, at once an utterly unique act of solidarity and the crystallizing image of the film’s whole storytelling approach. It’s not quite the finale - Autumn still needs to get an abortion, and they still have to head home - but it’s the one shot that distills everything special about this film. The abortion itself is handled without much fuss or undue tension. Undergoing the procedure isn’t the problem, but the means to afford it and the ability to make oneself available for it are the stakes here, and every part of the filmmaking reflects this. All things considered, Never Rarely Sometimes Always is about as direct as it can be in its messaging without speaking it to the audience, yet it never reduces its characterizations or flattens itself stylistically to achieve this message. It’s a polemical that functions just as phenomenally as cinema, boasting some tremendous craft and an amazingly deep cast of resonant performers. It’s also Hittman’s most consistent film to date, incrementally adding layers as it goes rather than collapsing at the finish line like Beach Rats.
So what more you could want, thousands of Academy voters who clearly read The Film Experience? How are you planning to reward this easy, obvious peak of cinema in a relatively slim year for films of any kind? You gonna secure your status before the lord and write Eliza Hittman’s name over Aaron Sorkin’s? Pencil in Scott Cummings and Héléne Louvart over Alan Baumgarten and that devil Phedon Papamichael? Remember that Talia Ryder is just as impressive as Sidney Flanigan when you think about the many, many feats of actressing this year has given us? The joke is always that great films don’t really need the Academy’s awareness to secure their place in history, and I feel quite confident in saying that a year after first seeing it, I’m going to be thinking about this film for a long time.
If we’re being honest, many of Oscar’s presumed alternate choices this year are pretty good. But this quarantine has not been particularly giving. And I could stand a few more good things.
Reader Comments (22)
Exceptional piece, Nick. I love how much you love this movie.
I'll be honest and admit I wasn't quite as smitten by this film as you were. Hittman and her cast and crew do a stellar job of immersing you in Autumn's mood and headspace...but that was as far as my admiration went. As much as I was admiring the craft of the filmmakers and the unsentimentally of the performances while watching the film, I couldn't help but yearn for more story (more plot?). It definitely seems like I fall in that camp that wished for a few more scenes documenting their time in New York, or explaining a bit more how she got into this situation. Same goes for Flanigan. Interesting that you compared her performance to Charlie Plummer's in Lean on Pete — a performance I loooove. I felt Lean on Pete's script gave Plummer more opportunities to flesh out his character than Never Rarely Sometimes Always' script gives Flanigan.
That said, your writeup definitely made me reconsider the film's choices so I'm eager to dive in again at some point and reassess.
Once again, thank you for this fleshed out piece. You're a wonderful writer who always makes me rethink films (or reinforce my love).
First issue with this movie is its title.
BVR - Thank you so much!! It always means a lot to read that I've made someone reconsider their take on a film - hit me up after you watch it! I can definitely see those reservations you mentioned, and I thought a lot about Tim Brayton's more reserved but still mostly positive review when I was writing this, which made me consider why I'm so taken with it a lot more than many positive reviews. Rewatching this I was surprised to realize how much of it was on subways and public spaces, but I really liked the picture of New York we get from these spaces. You can't beat that chicken.
Unknown - But it's so specific! What else would they have called it? "Autumn"? "Promising Young Woman"? It's a mouthful but I like this title a lot.
I love this film. It's fucking incredible as I was just amazed by the visual tone of it and the element of realism.
I like the film overall, but I don't like how facile and ham-handed it is with any male character, and find it loses steam when Théodore Pellerin is inserted in there to add some cliched relationship drama. You don't mention any of this in your piece, so I'm assuming it doesn't bother you?
I think the biggest handicap of this film, is how "Ladybird" and "Juno" may feel overrated at this time? I thought they were both good to great films, but both were quite overhyped at their day, and while I don't doubt this one may be a masterpiece, that's a lot of weight working against.
I found Talia Ryder most affecting in the film,totally raw and unshowy but a true representation of a best friend,I like that the friendship was wjat it was no explaining,the way they were together told you lots about them both,I imagined Skylar has always stuck up for Autumn ever since they were kids,I hope Ryder gets more oppurtunities to shine.
I wasn't as keen on Sidney Flanigan but wouldn't be shocked if she sneaked in,screenplay is very deserving to.
I tried to like this movie, but it seemed too much like an ‘after school special.’ High school girl in trouble flees to NY. That’s about it. It was great to see NYC pre-Covid with everyone mask-less and living their lives. Maybe I missed it, but I wished the main character had more ‘should I go through with this or not/do babies’ lives matter, am I making the right decision, etc. Also thought Autumn’s performance was kind’ve wooden and I got more emotion, empathy, connection and warmth from the main milk provider in ‘First Cow.’
@Nick Taylor -- I love this film, too, so thanks for eloquently stating what I can't. Absolutely wonderful writing.
Is this one of those films, like First Cow that either affect you right away and forever, or leaves one cold? I certainly belong to the former and it is not even within the realm of my experience that I connected to the cartographic journey of Autumn and Skylar. It is like the journey of Otilia and Gabita in 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days -- the intense horror of a jouney by going through subterranean spaces to lose a child. It is the realism both films captured that drew me in. In Never Rarely Sometimes Always it approximates the lived experiences of what Chris Marker calls "direct cinema" in all its visceral and tactile sensories. Yet it is the poetry of the everyday, of the every-minute that in my opinion elevates this to great cinema. Something I will be thinking more of for several months (most likely years) to come.
Lady Bird and Juno are completely different in tone and theme from one another, let alone Never Rarely Sometimes Always. Movies about young women can exist without comparing them to one another, just like movies about middle-aged men.
@jules...
the feeling of "been there, done that" hurted so many films in the Oscar race... a really good example was "Valmont" underperforming so much after "The Dangerous Liasons"...
this year it could also affect "Minari" even thought it is a completely different film than "Parasite".
It works way better when a similar film (or a previous entry in a franchise) wasn't that much aprecciated, and there are plenty of cases like Aliens doing better than Alien or Mad Max: Fury Road... that is something that helps Borat Subsequent Moviefilm to be openly discussed in 3 categories (Supporting Actress, Song, Adapted Screenplay) and have began being listed as a possible Best Picture nominee shocker (after its success in nominations at the Globes and the WGA).
Lazy AMPAS members will see the trailer of Never Rarely Sometimes Always and would recall inmediately both Juno and Ladybird and probably won't even play the movie, if they didn't love the other ones. And we all know at this point how lazy, AMPAS members can be.
I personally loved this film and the muted expression was part of the reason why. So often anything involving young people and reproductive choice, if shown at all, are dialed up to 11.There are many different stories to be told.
I loved this film and wish the two girls would be nominated
Do not see it happening 😰😰😰
thevoid99 - Completely agreed! The visual style is so impressive
Jonathan - I liked the tension around Pellerin’s character, and that his performance managed to feel gross without being demonstrative. I didn’t think its portrait of “men” or any particular man was facile, and I think the impact of the first OBGYN prevents the film’s thesis from being reducible to “men are the only problem” or something like that. You’re right that I totally did not mention this anywhere in the piece, and I hope this suffices.
Jesus Alonso - I think lazy AMPAS members are more likely to watch the trailer for this and go “oh yeah, we didn’t like that Romanian movie about abortions either” or “whatever happened to Catalina Sandino Moreno?”. Does Oscar have a particular track record with abortion- themed movies? Yeah they can be stingy on teen girl’s stories but I agree with jules, the tone of this is just so different from Juno and Lady Bird that I wouldn’t assume it’d be their default comparison point, unless they’ve seen so few women-centered stories in general. I’m not assuming bad faith reads aren’t happening, but I’d really hope it’d be for slightly better thought out reasons.
markgordonuk - I don’t know if I like Ryder more but I think she’s super, and the fact that she’s been getting less attention has made me a bit more vocal about singing her praises too. Hope to see them both getting big roles real soon.
TOM - Her perspective really is “Oh I can’t have this kid” from minute one. I’m not uninterested in the deliberations you’re talking about, but I appreciate this story and this character knowing themselves well enough that we don’t get those scenes. It’s not the same kind of circumstances, but I think The Surrogate does a really compelling job of exploring those questions. I wouldn’t have compared Flanigan’s performance to John Magaro in First Cow but I’m very intrigued by it.
Sheridan - Thank you!! Pretty bold of you to say you couldn’t express your love for the film and then write that incredibly thoughtful paragraph. Good lord. And I agree, based on the people who I’ve talked to that weren’t totally jazzed about it, that it’s a hot or cold thing.
jules - Ditto.
marshako - Yes! There’s no false drama. They know what they have to do and they do it.
Rdf - We can dream! I think Actress and Screenplay are still feasibly on the table.
My absolute favorite film of the year. I really enjoyed it upon first viewing, but this film truly requires a second viewing to see the nuances of everything, I complete became engulfed with it upon second watch. It's a massive longshot but I'm still praying Flanigan can sneak into actress somehow. Ryder 100% deserves a nod for Supporting Actress and is my preferred performance in the film, but she doesn't have a shot.
The "Never Rarely Sometimes Always" scene should honestly have been enough for Flanigan to get in, one of the best acted scenes of the past few years.
I would've skipped this if NYFCC had not given the Actress prize to Flanigan, but I'm glad I saw it. I think the script is excellent (compressed and guided by the time of trip once they start off to NYC) and I hope it makes its way into nomination morning. Ryder is superb in a race that isn't shaking loose from the early favorites, other than confirming that Youn Yuh-jung will be the dark horse winner :)
Nick -- i am not a huge fan of this movie (i mean i like it a lot but it's not top ten material for me) but this is a beautiful piece and made me question why i didn't love this movie quite this much... which is what good criticism should do (make you think harder about a movie, whether or not you love or hatee it or anywhere in beetween).
I also want to say that I think the title is perfect.. It makes that scene hit with even more seismic force. But then i'm a huge fan of hyper specific titles. )Generic titles make me so crazy. )
Sebastian - I still need to see one or two Supporting Actress contenders but I like Ryder more than most of them. Both actresses are currently on my personal ballot, and they're not going anywhere.
zig - Hell yeah! Proof of the power of critics orgs. I'm glad you liked it! And Youn would be such a great winner.
Nathaniel - Thank you!!!! That's a tremendously nice thing to say. And yes, the title is perfect. Been a good year for titles! Even some of the more generic ones like Swallow are really evocative.
nick, really well-written and passionate article...congrats. i must say i didn't care for the film and second many of the comments. exactly what people like about it (the deadeningly slow pace, the un-judicious editing, the overly detailed detail) is what drove me crazy about it. i thought hittman (a wonderfully talented artist) didn't shape the piece dramatically...she just shows us everything. i also found flanigan to be a little too tabula rasa and not very expressive, and she didn't pull me in. i realize i'm in a minority on this one. i thought it involved a lot of talented people doing a well-meaning story, but i wanted more artful interpretation. you make a very smart and persuasive case...always fun to read fellow staff members' impassioned takes.
I hope that those who love NRSA will seek out Eliza Hittman's previous film Beach Rats. It's an excellent film about a young man (late teens/early twenties) dealing clumsily with his sexuality. It features an outstanding performance by Harris Dickinson that got him enough attention to get major roles in big productions - he played John Paul Getty III in Trust. I hope NRSA can do the same for Sidney Flanigan.
I loved this film, and this piece. I watched it three times now and am hypnotized by the unstructured feel of so many of its scenes, which reminded me of 1970s Altman, and naturalistic depiction of this teenager's life. And I liked Theodore Pellerin, but maybe that's only because he's such an naturally interesting actor.
It seems, though, that this is the sort of film that the Academy basically ignores, and it only did as well as it did with awards because of the pandemic, when everybody was watching it -- doubtful this would be the case in normal circumstances. Good work is its own reward, though.
I'm still under the impression of Never Rarely Sometimes Always. We need films like this. There are so many girls who face violence, discrimination, and misunderstanding from society. They have so many obstacles to overcome to do what they think is right for themselves and their future. This needs to be talked about. How can people tell me how to live and what to do if it does not affect them in any way? It seems to me that everything is quite simple: If you don’t want to have abortions, don’t do them yourself! Why can't they calm down? Why do my body, my life, and my choices bother them? I am also a student, and I am Pro-Choice because I believe that every woman has the right to decide for herself what to do with her body and her life, and no one should interfere in this. I don't understand why some people want to deprive women of the right to decide and enforce their religious or moral beliefs. If they were to read an essay sample like https://gradesfixer.com/free-essay-examples/pro-choice-abortion/, they might wonder how it feels for someone who has already decided everything for them. Thanks to such films, I hope we will be able to protect women's rights to freedom, and I highly recommend watching it to those who have not thought about such a problem before.