Never Rarely Sometimes Always: A Movie for Women, Defiantly Pro-Voice
The stomach punches are both figurative and literal in Never Rarely Sometimes Always, Eliza Hittman’s searing, soaring new film. Pain is everywhere in this movie: in the bruises that color its heroine’s abdomen, in the tears that crawl down her cheeks, in the casual insults and vulgar leering that she silently absorbs. But what makes Hittman’s work special is her generosity of spirit. Her honesty is unflinching; her compassion is revelatory.
When we first meet Autumn (a heartbreaking Sidney Flanigan), she’s performing at a high school talent show, strumming “He’s Got the Power” as a male student from the audience yells out, “Slut!” It’s the first of many indignities she endures, a steady stream of degradation that Hittman presents with crushing matter-of-factness. Autumn is hardly a submissive wallflower; at one point, she avenges an unspecified offense by flinging a cup of water in a boy’s face. But regular humiliation and bodily invasion are nevertheless facts of her small-town life. Whenever she clocks out of her shift as a cashier at a grocery store, she reaches through a screened partition and hands her faceless manager a wad of bills; as she does so, he peppers her wrist with unsolicited kisses. Read More