"Never Rarely Sometimes Always," a title taken from the multiple-choice options of a medical questionnaire performed at a Planned Parenthood facility, is probably wisely mostly clinical in its quest narrative of a teenager traveling from a backwater Pennsylvanian town to New York abortion clinics. Regardless of one's opinions on abortion, I know I don't want to see the pro-choice version of the manipulative emotionalism and propaganda that critics have accused (and which I haven't seen) of the pro-life diatribe "Unplanned" (2019). I think such quiet straightforwardness as displayed here makes for a stronger polemic anyways.
Sidney Flanigan and Talia Ryder, who play the cousins making the trip, are appreciably naturalistic, which is also aided by the intimate, hand-held camerawork. The picture does well to demonstrate their close bond despite the relative lack of dialogue, and the movie's reservedness makes its couple of more-emotional scenes, the titular questionnaire and a sequence where the cousins are momentarily split apart, stronger by contrast.
A more questionable element of the picture, written and directed by Eliza Hittman, is that every man in it who isn't merely doing his job--usually behind protective glass--is a creep or pervert. A boy from school is rudely juvenile, the mother's boyfriend makes a sexual comment while petting a dog and comes across as a schmuck otherwise, the manager where the cousins work disgustingly force kisses their hands at the end of each shift, a young man's intentions towards the cousin become ominous, and there's the guy masturbating on the subway. Plus, there's the, as based on the answers to the questionnaire, violence of a man or men against the girl. To be fair, the women who aren't the leads or who don't work for Planned Parenthood, also come across poorly--the mother and the local supposed-doctor. The result is that "Never Rarely Sometimes Always" isn't only a bleak outlook on the abortion situation in the United States, but also a bleak view in general of humanity.
Sidney Flanigan and Talia Ryder, who play the cousins making the trip, are appreciably naturalistic, which is also aided by the intimate, hand-held camerawork. The picture does well to demonstrate their close bond despite the relative lack of dialogue, and the movie's reservedness makes its couple of more-emotional scenes, the titular questionnaire and a sequence where the cousins are momentarily split apart, stronger by contrast.
A more questionable element of the picture, written and directed by Eliza Hittman, is that every man in it who isn't merely doing his job--usually behind protective glass--is a creep or pervert. A boy from school is rudely juvenile, the mother's boyfriend makes a sexual comment while petting a dog and comes across as a schmuck otherwise, the manager where the cousins work disgustingly force kisses their hands at the end of each shift, a young man's intentions towards the cousin become ominous, and there's the guy masturbating on the subway. Plus, there's the, as based on the answers to the questionnaire, violence of a man or men against the girl. To be fair, the women who aren't the leads or who don't work for Planned Parenthood, also come across poorly--the mother and the local supposed-doctor. The result is that "Never Rarely Sometimes Always" isn't only a bleak outlook on the abortion situation in the United States, but also a bleak view in general of humanity.