Never Rarely Sometimes Always Review
"Never Rarely Sometimes Always" is a film about a teenage girl (Sidney Flanigan) getting an abortion: the step-by-step process warts and all. It takes place over a few days and since it's such a realistic story, it would be weird to expect any noticeably significant character development in the traditional screenwriting sense by the end of it -it’s there if you're looking for it but the film is more so about the people it follows and it feels effortlessly uninterested in drama for the sake of drama or story for the sake of story. It never loses sight of what it's about. There's a sweet message about realizing what you're going through and being able to process it as well as the overarching message of accepting and seeking help when you need it and the different shades of support one can get or want from different family members.
It's incredible what writer/director Eliza Hittman and her team were able to get out with such a minuscule budget. It's crafted in a pseudo-documentary way with a collaboration from the folks over at Planned Parenthood and a lot of it seemed like a product of guerilla filmmaking. She manages to get an amazing performance out of the two leads Flanigan and Talia Ryder, her onscreen cousin with very little dialogue between the two despite the movie dedicating the majority of its runtime to both of them as they travel from Pennsylvania to New York City. We watch them kill time, eat, sit in waiting rooms and so on. It's a boring watch for some but for me, I wouldn't want it any other way.