The Oscar-tipped director reveals her decade-long battle to bring
abortion drama Never Rarely Sometimes Always to the screen
Eliza Hittman does not make feelgood films. Instead, the Brooklyn-born director’s work is more likely to leave you with a strange sensation in the pit of your stomach: exhilaration spiked with a heavy dose of unease. Her first two features were impressionistic, ominous pieces about unorthodox sexual awakenings, bristling with closeups of clammy limbs and anxious faces. But for her latest film, Hittman has shifted her gaze away from those adolescent encounters and towards something even more disconcerting: their potential aftermath.
Never Rarely Sometimes Always centres on Autumn (Sidney Flanigan, making her acting debut), a withdrawn 17-year-old with a dysfunctional home life who finds herself pregnant. Her attempt to get an abortion is a quest that takes her from
Pennsylvania to the uninvitingly bright lights of
New York City, a place Autumn and her cousin Skylar (Talia Ryder) must endure, penniless and exhausted, as they are shunted from clinic to bus terminal and back again. Meticulously understated and gut-punchingly sad, Never Rarely… looks as if it could be Hittman’s breakthrough moment. Thanks to rave reviews, festival accolades and champions such as Moonlight director Barry Jenkins (who exec-produced the film), Oscar buzz is now steadily building (buzz that was given a major boost thanks to the Academy’s decision to relax its anti-streaming rules for films whose cinema releases have been scuppered by the pandemic).