E4 FRIDAY, MARCH 13, 2020 LATIMES.COM/CALENDAR
Let’s talk about her abortion
makes clear, her choice is
well and truly hers; if she
owes anyone an explana-
tion, it certainly isn’t us.
When Autumn does confide
in her cousin, Hittman tell-
ingly doesn’t dwell on the
conversation, instead cut-
ting to Skylar’s swift, word-
less response: She stuffs
cash into her pockets, texts
her family an excuse and fol-
lows Autumn onto the next
bus bound for Manhattan.
They’re in for one hell of a
journey.
“Never Rarely Some-
times Always” is the third
and most accomplished fea-
ture written and directed by
Hittman, after her striking
summer-of-love dramas “It
Felt Like Love” (2013) and
“Beach Rats” (2017). The ex-
plosive, sun-drenched sen-
suality she brought to those
earlier pictures has been
subsumed by a gray, wintry
chill, a sobering premise
and, once the characters ar-
rive in Manhattan, a clock
that starts ticking away in
the background. The twist
here is that time doesn’t
threaten to run out so much
as drag out.
With barely enough mon-
ey for food, let alone a place
to stay, Autumn and Skylar
spend much of their timeThere’s an early moment
in “Never Rarely Sometimes
Always,” Eliza Hittman’s ex-
quisite, quietly overwhelm-
ing new film, when 17-year-
old Autumn (Sidney Flani-
gan) gives herself a nose
piercing. You might cringe,
groan and turn away from
the screen (I did, anyway),
but Autumn remains calm
and unflinching as she deftly
sterilizes and inserts the
needle.
It’s a tense scene that
ends on a strangely reassur-
ing note, and it tells you
something important about
Autumn: This is someone
who, for reasons that will be-
come slowly and heart-
breakingly clear, has learned
to look out for herself.
Sensitively and meticu-
lously, with spare dialogue
and quotidian details,
Hittman fleshes out Au-
tumn’s lonely world. Life in
her small Pennsylvania town
is humdrum at best, alienat-
ing at worst. Autumn may
look like a conventionally
moody teenager, but that
resting frown is less grouchy
than guarded.
Her closest, perhaps only
friend is her cousin Skylar
(Talia Ryder), with whom
she works at a grocery store
after school. She has a kind
but distracted mom (Shar-
on Van Etten) and a surly
stepdad (Ryan Eggold) who
occasionally hurls a trou-
bling leer in her direction.
He’s like an ostensibly
grown-up version of the boys
at school who crudely taunt
her at every opportunity.
The lack of overt expos-
ition suits Autumn’s natural
reticence. But it also reflects
a reality in which most peo-
ple, being people rather than
movie characters, are in no
hurry to announce their
identities or blurt out their
secrets.
Autumn’s secrets, and
the glimmers of a plot, do
eventually surface at a local
women’s clinic, where a
worker confirms her suspi-
cions — she’s pregnant —
and quickly hands her a
pamphlet on the joys of
adoption. But Autumn has
other ideas, as we see in an-
other series of wordless ac-
tivities: a vitamin-C binge,
some self-inflicted belly
punches and a Google
search on Pennsylvania
state laws. Being a minor,
she finds out, she can’t pro-
cure an abortion without pa-
rental consent — and as she
has no intention of telling
her parents, she sets her
eyes on New York City.
In a notable rarity for an
American fiction film, Au-
tumn’s decision isn’t bela-
bored, judged or rational-
ized; nor is it preceded by
any protracted hand wring-
ing. It’s borne of her difficult,
desperate circumstances
and her natural self-reli-
ance. Most of all, the filmwaiting in between consulta-
tions and procedures.
The Port Authority Bus
Terminal becomes a kind of
purgatory, marked by the re-
curring, almost comically
Sisyphean image of them
dragging their hugely im-
practical suitcase up and
down stairs and through
turnstiles. For two teenagers
who haven’t traveled much
outside their hometown, the
city of New York, with its
teeming trains and bustling
throngs, is both exciting and
daunting, a labyrinth that
proves indifferent to their
existence even as it threat-
ens to swallow them up.
The American health-
care system, in particular
the perpetually embattled
zone devoted to women’s
health, is a labyrinth of an-
other kind. The heart of “Ne-
ver Rarely Sometimes Al-
ways” — and the meaning of
its initially awkward, per-
fectly gut-wrenching title —
emerges in the scenes at
Planned Parenthood, which
are methodically researched
and rigorously naturalistic.
Here, Autumn is greeted by
receptionists and social
workers who, despite their
unfailingly professional tact
and sensitivity, don’t neces-
sarily make her ordeal anyeasier.
At the recent Sundance
Film Festival, a jury
awarded “Never Rarely
Sometimes Always” a spe-
cial prize for “neorealism” —
a somewhat amusing desig-
nation that nonetheless
captures something of the
movie’s discernible Europe-
an art-house influences. (It
also won the runner-up prize
at last month’s Berlin Inter-
national Film Festival.)
Shot on grainy 16-milli-
meter film by French cine-
matographer Hélène Lou-
vart, whose camera likes to
linger on everyday waiting
rooms, passing crowds and
pensive faces, the movie
owes a clear stylistic debt to
neorealist standard bearers
like Jean-Pierre and Luc
Dardenne — who, like Hitt-
man, have a particular gift
for mapping the outer and
inner lives of young people.
Another important
touchstone here is “4
Months, 3 Weeks and 2
Days” (2007), Cristian
Mungiu’s masterful thriller
about a teenager helping her
best friend procure an abor-
tion in communist Romania.
Hittman’s film isn’t quite
that harrowing, insofar as
Autumn’s procedure is legal
and performed by trustwor-thy hands. But it says some-
thing about the present po-
litical climate in the U.S. —
especially with a major abor-
tion case before a conserva-
tive-dominated Supreme
Court — that the movie gen-
erates some of the same roil-
ing tension, the same haunt-
ing awareness of the phys-
ical and emotional vulnera-
bility of its young characters,
and by extension the thou-
sands of teenagers who have
found themselves in similar
straits.
The movie’s sympathies,
much like its political con-
victions, couldn’t be clearer.
But paradoxically, what
makes “Never Rarely Some-
times Always” so forceful —
and certainly the most sear-
ingly confrontational Ameri-
can drama about abortion
rights in recent memory — is
its quality of understate-
ment, its determination to
build its argument not di-
dactically but cinematically.
Hittman can be bruis-
ingly blunt when it serves
her, as when she draws our
attention to the casual mi-
sogyny Autumn and Skylar
endure on their journey,
whether it’s their touchy-
feely boss or the creep on the
subway. Even the most be-
nign version of this, an older
kid (an excellent Théodore
Pellerin) who chats them up
and helps them out, makes
clear just how ruthlessly
transactional life can be.
But if the picture
Hittman paints is stirringly
bleak, it is not without its
passages of tentative hope,
even grace. Through it all,
Autumn remains coolly, re-
siliently Autumn, even once
her weary façade crumbles
and her deeply buried an-
guish peeks through.
Flanigan, in a remarkable
screen debut, gives a lesson
in the revelatory power of re-
straint: I’ve rarely seen an
actor wring so much mean-
ing and feeling from so many
mumbled one-word re-
sponses. She and Ryder
beautifully capture the bond
between two young women
who have evolved, by neces-
sity, their own near-sublimi-
nal form of wordless com-
munication. The most reso-
nant image in “Never Rarely
Sometimes Always” is of two
hands clasping in silence, a
gesture of solidarity that be-
comes its own profound act
of survival.Focus Features
SIDNEY FLANIGANmakes a remarkable screen debut in the movie “Never Rarely Sometimes Always.”‘NEVER RARELY SOMETIMES ALWAYS’
AT THE MOVIES: REVIEWS
“Saturday Night Live’s”
Pete Davidson has long been
known more for his romantic
woes and pot smoking than
for anything he’s done in
showbiz. But that should
change with “Big Time Ado-
lescence,” a high school
comedy with a dynamic
Davidson performance.
Griffin Gluck stars as Mo
Harris, an ordinary subur-
ban 16-year-old who has a
tense relationship with his
parents — especially his dad,
played by Jon Cryer — and
he has a crush on a cool girl
(Oona Laurence).
Mo also has Zeke (David-
son), his sister’s hard-party-
ing ex, the kind of best bud
who gets him drunk, tells
him dirty jokes and dares
him to do stupid things, like
sell drugs to the upperclass-
men to boost his popularity.
Writer-director Jason Or-
ley sticks to the tried-and-
true in this cautionary tale of
a boy who risks everything
because of peer pressure.
Frankly, the film feels like
it’s missing a narrative beat
or two, plus a proper ending.
But it is funny and fast
paced, with an outstanding
cast, and Orley modulates
the tone well, conveying
both the fun and danger of
being young, impulsive and
poorly supervised.
Mostly, it’s memorable
because of Davidson, who
with his smirk, buggy eyes
and short-sighted YOLO
philosophy brings a rakish
charm to the role of the
sketchy high school friend so
many people — if they’re
lucky — eventually outgrow.
— Noel Murray“Big Time Adolescence.”
Rated: R, for drug content,
alcohol use, pervasive lan-
guage, and sexual references
— all involving teens. Run-
ning time: 1 hour, 31 minutes.
Playing: ArcLight Holly-
wood; ArcLight Santa Moni-
ca; ArcLight Pasadena;
available March 20 on Hulu.NeonMO (Griffin Gluck, left) hangs out with his older pal
Zeke (Pete Davidson). What could possibly go wrong?
‘BIG TIME ADOLESCENCE’
Familiar path of
dude slackerdom
From the use of Clayma-
tion sequences in interview
settings that take their cue
from “Do the Right Thing,”
the documentary “A Kid
from Coney Island” proves
to be as surprising and af-
fecting as the unorthodox
career trajectory of its sub-
ject, basketball player
Stephon Marbury.
Hailing from a household
of NBA hopefuls, Marbury
would go the distance, ini-
tially forming half of a dy-
namic duo for the Minne-
sota Timberwolves for sev-
eral seasons with fellow
bright light Kevin Garnett.
Nicknamed “Starbury,”
he inspired Spike Lee’s “He
Got Game,” but a series of
subsequent trades took
their toll — he was faulted for
not being a team player and
taken down by the press as
having “too much New York
in him,” leading to a personal
meltdown.
At this juncture, those
unfamiliar with Marbury’sstory might expect a bleaker
outcome, but he experi-
enced a spiritual reawaken-
ing in Beijing, where he’d fi-
nally earn the fan support
and media respect he’d long
been craving.
While sticking to the doc-
umentary template, co-di-
rectors Coodie Simmons
and Chike Ozah demon-
strate some fresh moves of
their own, including having
rappers Fat Joe and Cam-
’ron weigh in along with TV
journalist Stephen A. Smith,
plus members of Marbury’s
close-knit family.
Ultimately, Marbury’s re-
warding rebound has as
much to say about where
you come from as where
you’re headed.
— Michael
Rechtshaffen“A Kid from Coney Island.”
Not rated. Running time: 1
hour, 28 minutes. Playing:
Laemmle Monica Film Cen-
ter, Santa MonicaJDS Sports / Slam
STEPHON MARBURYis surrounded by the media
in Beijing in a scene from the moving documentary.‘A KID FROM CONEY ISLAND’Marbury’s still got
game — in China
A schizophrenic music
producer and an introverted
songwriter on antidepres-
sants form a tender bond in
soul-crushing Los Angeles,
courtesy of “Lost Transmis-
sions,” a well-intentioned
but frustratingly unengag-
ing first feature by Kathar-
ine O’Brien.
After hitting it off at a
gathering of mutual friends,
mousy Hannah (intriguing
U.K. actress Juno Temple af-
fecting a nasal American ac-
cent and a wispy Lana Del
Rey singing style) and
British recording industry
whiz Theo (Simon Pegg)
would appear destined to
make beautiful music to-
gether. But if this sounds like
the makings of another
“Once,” no such luck.
It turns out Theo has a
history of mental issues trig-
gered by a lot of bad drugs
during his wild rocker days,
and when he goes off his
meds he goes on tangents
about time travel and hear-ing messages under radio
static, resulting in the mad
genius being committed to a
psychiatric institution.
Although both Pegg, fa-
mous for his lighter work in
Edgar Wright’s sci-fi come-
dies, and Temple are im-
pressively immersed in their
respective lost souls, O’Bri-
en, whose painstakingly
naturalistic portrait of men-
tal illness is based on a real-
life relationship, demands
viewer sympathy without
sufficiently earning it. De-
spite its penetrating hand-
held camerawork (by Arnau
Valls Colomer) and mind-al-
tering sound design, “Lost
Transmissions” never man-
ages to tune out the lingering
element of self-indulgence.
— Michael
Rechtshaffen“Lost Transmissions.”Not
rated. Running time: 1 hour,
43 minutes. Playing: Arena
Cinelounge, Hollywood; also
on VOD.Elizabeth KitchensGravitas Ventures
A TALEof music and mental illness is led by Juno
Temple and Simon Pegg. The setting? Los Angeles.‘LOST TRANSMISSIONS’Static drowns out
romance’s music
‘Never Rarely
Sometimes
Always’
Rated: PG-13, for
disturbing/mature
thematic content,
language, some sexual
references and teen
drinking
Running time: 1 hour,
41 minutes
Playing: ArcLight Cinemas,
Hollywood, and the
Landmark, West Los
AngelesEliza Hittman’s third feature is a searingly confrontational portrait of a teen girl
JUSTIN CHANG
FILM CRITIC