Eliza Hittman is a filmmaker who shows rather than tells. That’s just her style. It might isolate viewers expecting to be told how to think at the movies, but for the rest of us, the gifted writer-director of “Beach Rats” is nothing short of an American indie queen. The 41-year-old Flatbush, NY native has just given us the best film of her career with “Never Rarely Sometimes, Always.” In the film, Hittman means to show us the aches of being a teenage girl today: the joys, the pain, the heartbreak, and, most of all, the vulnerability. 18-year-old Philly native Autumn (astounding acting debut by Sidney Flanigan) finds out that she is 10 weeks pregnant and that the only way to get a legal abortion, without her parents knowing, is to hop on a greyhound bus and go to a New York clinic. She brings along her cousin Skylar (Talia Rider) for moral support, but as the procedure starts to take longer than expected, trouble ensues when they start to run out of cash. With little money and not much knowledge about New York, the two young women endure a vagabond lifestyle, spending nights on streets and subway trains until Autumn can be properly treated. Hittman’s insistence to slowly but surely build up the drama as her movie goes along is a wise decision. Though highly topical and one of the best movies I’ve seen about abortion, the success of the film ultimately lies in the friendship between Autumn and Skylar. Although they rarely verbally articulate anything they're experiencing, the bond they share is the beating heart of this exceptional movie.
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