Never Rarely Sometimes Always

Writer/director Eliza Hittman's award-winning drama takes a compassionate, clear-eyed look at abortion in America through the perspective of a desperate Pennsylvanian teenager. Unable to terminate her pregnancy without her parents' consent, seventeen-year-old Autumn (impressive newcomer Sidney Flanigan) takes a bus to a New York clinic, supported by her cousin (Talia Ryder). Discovering the procedure will take longer than expected, they find themselves adrift in the city. Hittman favours realism over melodrama, using a style that is unfussy and subtle. She isn't afraid of silence and gives her protagonists room to breathe, while Flanigan and Ryder reward her with natural, complex performances that make their characters feel achingly alive. When the former reveals her pent-up pain in a scene that gives Never... its title, we cry, too. Sombre and sensitive, Hittman's film offers a searing, outraged indictment of a world where women still have to fight for control of their lives and bodies, without ever resorting to polemics or political grandstanding.