Rent The Outrun (2024)

Saoirse Nails It - The Outrun review by griggs

Saoirse Ronan nails it with her amazing performance in this intense addiction-recovery drama, making it super powerful and engaging.

Impressive ode to the transcendent power of nature - The Outrun review by PD

This film is something of a tone-poem depicting the protagonist’s brutal struggle with enough distinctive elements — in every sense of the word — to make it more than just another draining addiction story. Together with a powerful supporting performance from Stephen Dillane as bipolar father, Andrew, Saoirse Ronan as Rona puts herself through the physical and emotional wringer as a young woman repeatedly redefining her rock bottom before finally summoning the resolve to control her alcohol addiction.

The film is adapted from the memoir by Amy Liptrot, a native of the Orkney Islands, grounding her account in contemplations of the natural world around her, from its science to its mythology. Those side notes — covering everything from folkloric tales, beachcomber found-object art, maritime history, bird migration paths and old legends — give the story a distinctive aspect, whilst various interludes embrace documentary, philosophy and poetry, using archival footage, photographs and animation. Having so many narrative detours is a bold stroke, the extensive voiceover emphasising the material’s literary origins. But these deviations feed into a highly atmospheric sense of place, as well as laying the foundations for the communion with nature that will ultimately provide Rona with a way forward. Underwater images of seals are especially beautiful.

I sometimes wonder who addiction dramas are for, besides actors looking to shrug off vanity in favour of a gritty challenge. It’s been a long time since films about the downward spiral of alcoholism, like Wilder’s 'The Lost Weekend'. That said, a distinctive setting and imaginative narrative embellishment can make the desolation of unhealthy dependency compelling. ‘The Outrun’ definitely accomplishes this well. As Rona tends to the farming demands of lambing season, reminders of her raucous drunken days in London rupture her thoughts, with the thumping techno music that accompanies many of those memories pounding away in her headphones. Recollections of her time in rehab and the shame and self-doubt she shares with fellow alcoholics also surface in a timeline shuffled between London, the present-day Orkey Islands and her childhood there. "I cannot be happy sober,” she says to another AA attendee in a despondent moment. These thoughts collide also with memories of her father’s manic highs when she was a girl, smashing windows and welcoming the gale-force winds like a conductor in front of an orchestra, eventually forcing Annie to leave him. Dillane captures the wild swings of bipolar disorder with heartbreaking effectiveness.

The tentative turning point comes when Rona takes a job working with the RSPB, surveying for corncrakes, a once-prolific species now endangered. The job is monotonous at first, leaving her too much time to think. But when she finds herself in a tiny no-frills bird warden house on one of the most remote islands, she begins to see what the possibility of liberation might feel like. There’s no magical epiphany, just an accumulation of experiences, from Rona’s interactions with the friendly local community to her increasing immersion in nature, including a wonderful sequence involving an icy dip in the sea to join the seals.

The strength of Fingscheidt’s storytelling is how she harnesses the elements, a theme carried through in arresting images of the dramatic landscape, although, as in just about every film I watch these days, the score is often at best rather intrusive, and at worst an annoying distraction. At just over two hours, some might complain about its length, but the time went by very quickly for me, and that it did so while avoiding the many cliches of the cinematic memoir adaptation (usually by contorting life’s sprawl into a clear arc of definitive scenes) is its own achievement, a testament to both the source material and Ronan’s tremendous performance. Impressive stuff.

The Boredom - The Outrun review by Alphaville

A mood piece in which alcoholic London girl Saoirse heads to the wilds of Orkney to find herself. Does she? Whadyathink? Even the blurb tells us she’s on ‘a path of healing and rediscovering hope’. Based on a book and good luck to the author, but a by-the-numbers film? Wake me up when it’s over.