At just 30 years old, Saoirse Ronan has already established a sterling reputation as an actor who can “do anything”. Nominated as an adolescent for her precocious performance in Atonement, she’s only capitalized on her potential in the subsequent sixteen years (The Lovely Bones notwithstanding), and garnered three more nominations in the process. If her performance in The Outrun proves anything, it’s that we’ve only scratched the surface of what Ronan is capable of as a performer. The film itself is good, if not as good as it could be. It’s a classic case of a terrific actor elevating the material, and it’s a chance for Ronan to delve into darker, more adult material than she ever has before.
The film is based on a memoir by Amy Liptrot about her journey recovering from alcoholism. Liptrot gets a screenwriting credit with director Nora Fingscheidt. The pacing of the story (tedious, long) illuminates the cumbersome process of drying out, that a major enemy on the road to recovery is the boredom. Ronan’s character is named Rona, a masters student in biology with a tendency to over-drink. In the film’s opening moments, she’s being physically thrown out of a bar after being asked repeatedly to leave. Not long after that she’s staying in the Orkney Islands in Scotland, her childhood home. The rural, isolated nature of the town makes it ideal after ninety days of rehab.
Her mother (Saskia Reeves) is a quiet, affectionate woman but her devout Christianity grates on her daughter. She’s much closer to her father (Stephen Dillane), a sheep farmer living out of a caravan. He’s also a severe manic depressive, prone to wild, occasionally violent, episodes that have already caused the family great pain, and spurned a divorce when Rona was a small child. Rona went to school in London which is where her hard partying days took place. She had a sweet, sensitive boyfriend (Paapa Essiedu), but he’s no longer in the picture by the time she’s in Orkney. At 29, Rona is forced to start from scratch after rehab, a prospect that only exacerbates her urge for another drink.
Told in a disjointed, non-linear style, The Outrun is frequently shifting between her life before and after recovery, coloring her sobriety with the traumas of her benders. The film is a bit more dependent on tropes than I would have liked, and the frequent psychoanalyzing of Rona only leads to simplistic conclusion. Fingscheidt does direct with intention, and given the gift of Ronan’s incredibly expressive face, she makes good use of the close-up throughout. The film’s editing (by Stephan Bechinger) often feels like a trick to make you forget how generic this recovery drama is, but there are some strong montage sequences, particularly one in the finale which truly earns the grandness that it aspires to.
Long stretches of voiceover monologue surprisingly enrich the setting, and The Outrun gains a lot by listening to Rona’s treatises on British mythology. The Scottish islands, beautiful and punishing in equal measure, go beyond metaphor and seep into Rona’s bones, giving her life some much needed restraint. We also get glimpses of Rona’s interest in biology and the natural world, a curiosity that lit the more productive portion of her twenties, before drink wiped it all away. It’s obviously important to Fingscheidt that Rona be more than just an addict, and some of the film’s most effective moments are when we see how capable she can be when sober. But since so much of the film is dedicated to unoriginal bender scenes (equipped with expected soft focus and shaky handheld cinematography), we end up with a film that feels much longer than it should be.
I think framing The Outrun as an “awards movie” – as it has been talked about since it’s Sundance premiere in January – does it a disservice, and only sets it up to disappoint. Ronan’s short career is already so dense with greatness, but she really doesn’t work as often as you’d think, and perhaps some get over-excited for any new project of hers. What’s more impressive is that this is Ronan’s first time as a producer, sculpting a project to her liking, and working outside of the mainstream film industry to do so. Not only is it proof that Ronan is officially into the more adult portion of her career, but it shows that (even with all she’s already accomplished) she’s still interested in exploring and perfecting her craft. The shagginess of this film and the viscera of her performance in it makes it feel like she values that more than an award, which is what you want from a good young actor.
Directed by Nora Fingscheidt