THE OUTRUN (2024)
After living life on the edge in London, a young woman attempts to come to terms with her troubled past by returning to the Scottish islands where she grew up.
After living life on the edge in London, a young woman attempts to come to terms with her troubled past by returning to the Scottish islands where she grew up.
The life of Rona (Saoirse Ronan), a young Orkney-born woman and postgraduate student in London, has been overtaken by alcohol abuse. Told through a series of non-linear fragments, The Outrun follows Rona as she picks herself up from the lowest point of her life.
After rehab and in her late-twenties, Rona agrees to return home to Orkney and help her father on his farm. She soon gets a job with an ornithological preservation society helping to track an endangered bird species and puts all her focus on the wild landscape of the Scottish islands.
At home, with her deeply religious mother (Saskia Reeves), she’s miserable and unsure where to put all her feelings. Although she’s away from all the temptations of London, being with her father (Stephen Dillane), who has bipolar disorder, brings up the scars of her youth. Slowly, Rona realises that isolation will be her salvation as much as she misses busy city life.
The film wildly juxtaposes her two lives. London is full of dimly lit parties, her bright teal hair bobbing to intense techno music. Orkney is coldly lit, waves crashing against rocks as she helps with lambing season. The now blonde Rona blasts EDM in her headphones as she feeds the farmyard animals, trying to suppress her desire to drink. The switch between the two, sometimes only differentiated by Rona’s hair colour, is purposefully chaotic and disorienting, making the audience feel like they’ve downed a bottle of vodka.
The Outrun never glamorises the partying and doesn’t shy away from depicting the way her relationship with the sweet yet underwritten Daynin (Paapa Essiedu) is poisoned by her relationship with alcohol. Alcoholism and recovering from it is a bleak experience, and the film is never afraid to lean into the gruesomeness. Even before rock bottom hits, it never truly looks like Rona is having fun.
Adapted and lightly fictionalised by the director Amy Fingscheidt and Amy Liptrot from the latter’s memoir, The Outrun relies on metaphors to slowly move forward the narrative. The 2016 book focused as much on the flora and fauna of the Orkney Islands as it did on alcoholism. The film adaptation blends the two stories using nature as an allegory for Rona’s willingness to succeed in sobriety. The memoir was praised for its lack of sentimentality, often asking the reader and now the movie watcher to fill in the gaps and bring their own experiences to the story.
There’s an unabashed romanticism and mysticism to The Outrun. Rona’s recovery story is interlaced with her observations about the history of Orkney and the folk tales she grew up hearing. Some are obvious metaphors for her path in life, others seem like a dreamlike meandering. The long voiceovers about sea creatures, the ecological history of Scottish wildlife and how Rona thought she could control the weather wear thin in the last act. These mystical tangents push the audience further away from the protagonist rather than bring us closer to her.
The film does struggle from not feeling like a fully realised world. Aside from Rona, everyone around her feels like blurry silhouettes instead of fully formed characters. There is more to her parents and her upbringing than this story allows to play out. Her relationship with Daynin and its breakdown is a trigger point for Rona, yet it’s pushed to the background in favour of sweeping shots of the coastline. While the fragmented backstory feels real to Rona’s experience, the lack of a tangible plot can make for a tricky viewing experience.
The real supporting character is the beautiful landscape. The whistling winds and crashing waves make it feel like you are standing on the rocks yourself staring out at the sea. The Outrun uses untrained actors from the local area and scenes are shot at Liptrot’s actual farm, adding a sense of rawness and authenticity.
Without the mysticism, The Outrun is another simple recovery narrative. While important to those who live it, the narrative follows the expected pattern of addicts hitting rock bottom and the slow steps towards recovery. Telling the story in a non-linear nature allows the audience to ride along with Rona as she remembers how she ended up on a remote island.
Running almost two hours, The Outrun drags and appears to lose control of the story it’s trying to tell. As Rona finds a new level of isolation on the island of Papay, the movie becomes repetitive as it becomes obvious Rona’s story has come to its natural conclusion.
Through all its faults, The Outrun sees Saoirse Ronan (who also produces alongside her husband Jack Lowden) at her best. The performance is so powerful it’s easy to forgive that so many scenes should have been left on the cutting room floor. It’s easy to forget The Outrun isn’t a documentary, and Ronan is acting; it’s such a naturalistic and effortless performance that lifts the movie. She subtly embodies the emotional rawness of recovering alcoholics struggling and the composed chaos it takes to move on from addiction.
UK • GERMANY | 2024 | 118 MINUTES | COLOUR | ENGLISH
director: Nora Fingscheidt.
writers: Nora Fingscheidt & Amy Liptrot (story by Amy Liptrot, Nora Fingscheidt & Daisy Lewis; based on the book by Amy Liptrot).
starring: Saoirse Ronan, Saskia Reeves, Stephen Dillane, Lauren Lyle, Paapa Essiedu & Izuka Hoyle.