Eliza Hittman does not make feelgood films. Instead, the Brooklyn-born director’s work is more likely to leave you with a strange sensation in the pit of your stomach: exhilaration spiked with a heavy dose of unease. Her first two features were impressionistic, ominous pieces about unorthodox sexual awakenings, bristling with closeups of clammy limbs and anxious faces. But for her latest film, Hittman has shifted her gaze away from those adolescent encounters and towards something even more disconcerting: their potential aftermath.
Never Rarely Sometimes Always centres on Autumn (Sidney Flanigan, making her acting debut), a withdrawn 17-year-old with a dysfunctional home life who finds herself pregnant. Her attempt to get an abortion is a quest that takes her from Pennsylvania to the uninvitingly bright lights of New York City, a place Autumn and her cousin Skylar (Talia Ryder) must endure, penniless and exhausted, as they are shunted from clinic to bus terminal and back again. Meticulously understated and gut-punchingly sad, Never Rarely… looks as if it could be Hittman’s breakthrough moment. Thanks to rave reviews, festival accolades and champions such as Moonlight director Barry Jenkins (who exec-produced the film), Oscar buzz is now steadily building (buzz that was given a major boost thanks to the Academy’s decision to relax its anti-streaming rules for films whose cinema releases have been scuppered by the pandemic).
Hittman describes her subjects as “everyday lives and everyday struggles”, which, while technically true, skims over just how unsettling her films can be. Her first two features, It Felt Like Love and Beach Rats – about a teenage boy trying to hide his burgeoning homosexuality – were sultry and dreamily ambiguous, heavy on lingering looks and light on expository dialogue (explaining the ending of either film would be an impressive feat). Never Rarely…, on the other hand, is tautly told and coldly realistic, painstakingly chronicling the hoops that Autumn jumps through in order to get an abortion. Yet the secret of its success is the story it doesn’t tell: how our protagonist became pregnant in the first place.
It is a narrative chasm the viewer is left to fill with their worst suspicions: what we do know is that Autumn has been mistreated in the past and, in the absence of a clear perpetrator, everyone becomes a culprit. “I was thinking about not having one antagonist but about the ways in which the world is in smaller and larger ways hostile to women,” Hittman explains in her slow, deliberate way. “It’s unavoidable.”
It certainly feels that way in Never Rarely…, which frequently resembles a horror movie whose villain is the malign, shapeshifting spirit of the patriarchy. From a student heckler to Autumn’s menacing stepfather, the creeps just keep coming: customers at the shop where Skylar and Autumn work; the girls’ boss; the man masturbating in the subway car. Hittman says her decision to portray this threat as structural rather than personal reflects the lack of accountability in these scenarios – often the act of apportioning blame can feel futile. “Ultimately for women in this country, there’s no justice that comes with accusing or confronting [abuse]. That’s something I think young women are very aware of.”
Unlike her often reticent protagonists (Autumn is borderline mute for the majority of Never Rarely…), Hittman is eager to talk about her work – although she does tend to demur from explanations when a solitary “mm-hmm” will do. When we speak she is in lockdown at home in New York, adjusting to a brave new world of endless video calling (“Zoom work is draining”) and trying to fulfil contractual obligations while supervising young children (before we get going she must persuade her five-year-old to grant her the time to do this interview). Yet despite sounding slightly frazzled by pandemic-era parenting, she is conscientiously counting her blessings, from having a stable career (Hittman teaches full-time at the Pratt Institute, a private New York university) to being able to drive to an empty beach nearby and walk around (“That’s been very restorative”).
Checking your lockdown privilege is something one feels especially inclined to do after watching her film. The plot might be set in motion by the US’s complex patchwork of age-related abortion laws (Pennsylvania requires parental consent; New York doesn’t), but recent events have broadened its relevance. Coronavirus-related upheaval has made getting an abortion an extremely fraught process for women who weren’t faced with such restrictions in the first place (Texas and Ohio were able to suspend all abortions in March by classifying them as elective procedures), as well as intensifying the vulnerability of those who were – a situation Hittman describes as “a crisis on top of a crisis”.
Despite its timeliness – not just in light of the pandemic, but also the Trump administration’s assault on reproductive rights – Never Rarely… has been in the pipeline for nearly a decade. The film may cleave to Hittman’s signature setup (grotty New York backdrop, troubled teenager front and centre) but it should be noted that she originally intended to make a completely different film, centring on an au pair in Ireland, a premise Hittman developed after learning about Savita Halappanavar, an Indian dentist living in Galway who was denied a life-saving abortion in 2012.
Hittman began researching Ireland’s eighth amendment – the recently repealed law that asserts a pregnant woman and her unborn child’s equal right to life – and the voyage women seeking an abortion took across the Irish Sea to mainland Britain. “Something about that journey felt very heroic to me,” says Hittman, “and unrepresented on screen.” But she struggled to muster up interest in the film during the Obama years, partly due to the administration’s reputation for progressiveness in that area – an impression Hittman describes as an “illusion”.
Yet Hittman also felt a resistance to the film on a more fundamental level. “When I started talking about the project, a common reaction was that it felt like a topic that would be better served in a documentary,” she says. “There are stigmas around representing female issues and experiences in the context of a fictional narrative film.” It has to do with the skewed perspective that means women’s stories tend to be othered – rendered specialist subjects – due to the prioritisation of the male gaze. “Documentaries are presenting information about topics people don’t know about and that’s the medium to explore – quote – issues,” she explains. It acts as a kind of feedback loop. “Women’s stories are less represented on screen so they’re seen as niche.”
The mainstream’s unwillingness to engage with the realities of abortion means many have no real idea of what it entails – Autumn certainly doesn’t. And yet the procedure itself is not a source of horror in Never Rarely…. In fact, it is almost the only thing in the film that isn’t – there are no mixed feelings, only relief. What is indisputably disturbing is the sight that greets Autumn outside one of the abortion clinics: a group of chanting protesters who crowd her and Skylar, zombie-style, as they approach. Due to the pandemic, the film was only in cinemas for a few days in the US. Had it been given a full release, did Hittman think there might have been similar demonstrations? “I guess we’ll never know,” she says merrily.
Still, on the internet, Hittman has seen “groups of people who are anti-abortion rally messageboards to drive the rating of the film down”. The review aggregator Metacritic notes the critics’ rave responses, but the average user review is a dire 3.2 thanks to submissions from members of the public, who describe the film as “hateful and misandrist”.
Whatever methods the protesters are pushing, they can’t quell the conversation Never Rarely… is prompting, or the solace it’s providing. It is something Hittman attributes to film’s unifying power – a phenomenon she thinks the pandemic has only intensified. “There’s something beautiful about this crisis that we’re all faced with,” she muses, “and that’s people’s desire all over the world to connect through cinema.”
Never Rarely Sometimes Always is streaming now on digital platforms
