Never Rarely Sometimes Always (Eliza Hittman, 2020)

Eliza Hittman's third feature film is difficult to evaluate. In some ways it's tempting to simply give it a pass, because there are certain things it obviously does "right." It focuses on a very narrow, specific set of problems, and in so doing is able to wrench unavoidably visceral tension out of moment-to-moment questions. Will the protagonists find a place to sleep for the night? How are they going to find money for food? How will they physically negotiate that large suitcase through the MTA turnstile as they're ducking under to avoid paying fare? 

But part of Hittman's achievement here, it seems, is the combination of a realist's eye for detail with a conventional Hollywood director's adherence to genre and formula. In telling the story of Autumn (Sidney Flanigan), a 17-year-old high schooler burdened by an unwanted pregnancy, NRSA is not afraid to employ ominous music, subtly propulsive editing, or the spatial claustrophobia one might find in horror films, all to drive home the disturbing nature of Autumn's plight. 

Given that this story of one young girl is also unavoidably an ideological statement --a Film About Abortion -- there are different ways Hittman could proceed. Rather than attempt to stand back and let the situation speak for itself, she doubles down on audience overdirection, making sure that we never forget just how alone Autumn is, how hamstrung she is by the American legal system, and how even the support services that are in place to help her and other young women like her are, at the end of the day, woefully inadequate. And so, Autumn's stepfather (Ryan Eggold) appears to be an abusive prick, although we can't be sure. And her mother (Sharon Van Etten) seems loving and supportive, but weak and feckless.

At least, that's what we are to assume from the little bit of them we encounter at the start of the film, and the fact that Autumn will not contact her mother for money, even when it might mean sleeping on the streets of New York, and jeopardizing her cousin Skylar (Talia Ryder) who came with her to New York as her sole support system, and is mostly paying for the procedure. This is where Hittman's style of "realism" gets a little muddy, and her objectives seem unclear.

On the one hand, NRSA will leave certain aspects of plot and characterization merely suggested, trusting its audience to infer an entire history from small details -- Autumn and her stepdad's brief nasty repartee, for example, or the thrown drink at the pizza parlor. But then, once Autumn and Skylar enter the larger world, Hittman tends to deal in signposting and exaggeration. The city is big and scary; there are predatory men everywhere; nobody, not even Skylar, can really understand what Autumn is going through.

So this creates a tension at the heart of NRSA. Hittman offers us a realistic, fully external glimpse of Autumn, a challenging character who often works against her best interests despite her pain and desperation. She takes her best friend for granted, shuns help when it's offered, and lets her pride get in the way of her larger needs. She is, in other words, a comprehensible teenager trying to navigate a world that is much bigger than her. But when Hittman situates Autumn within such a didactic, mechanical universe, her obstinacy reads less like human complexity and more like a necessary plot device.

After all, if we are going to look at NRSA as a constructed work of fiction, not a realistic portal into a set of social problems, then we have to ask ourselves why Hittman gave her audience Autumn in the first place. Flanigan is a non-professional actor whose closed-off mien is perfect for the role, particularly because she is so disarming in those few key moments when she lets her guard down. 

Still, she is a doe-eyed young white girl in a culture that has historically inculcated an instinct to protect such girls. Sure, Autumn's rural-suburban Pennsylvania is suitably white, but this all-enveloping whiteness seems to follow Autumn and Skylar to New York City, which is highly implausible, to say the least. (The only people of color onscreen for more than a second in this film are three black men drumming on buckets in the subway.) None of the Planned Parenthood workers, or the other clients, are people of color. This strikes me as genuinely odd, as though, consciously or not, NRSA feels it is addressing itself to a white audience, one that can only respect women's bodily autonomy when confronted with bodies like Autumn's.