Saoirse Ronan paints a compelling portrait of a woman stepping back from the edge in this Orkney-set drama. Here’s our The Outrun review.
It’s difficult to judge the authenticity of a film like The Outrun, which looks at a young woman’s battle for sobriety in her Scottish childhood home, without experience of the fight in question.
We can kid ourselves that we can, of course. Looking at how a story compares to other depictions we’ve seen – does it feel too Hollywood? Too “sanitised”? Does it feel real?
The Outrun, for my money, feels authentic – though I appreciate that may not hold all that much weight. Then again, I’ve never dressed up as a bat and fought crime either, so maybe this is a tricky thread to pull on.
What I can say with some confidence is that Nora Fingscheidt’s film, based on journalist Amy Liptrot’s 2016 memoir of the same name, feels empathetic. In this genre, that counts for a lot. Taking Ronan’s Rona from her wild, party-loving and ultimately very dangerous London lifestyle to her hometown on the islands of Orkney, Fingscheidt paints a distinction not just between alcoholism and sobriety but urban and rural living; of life speeding up and slowing down; of the crippling fear that your days are wasting away and the equal terror of returning to a place that once hurt you so badly.
Ronan makes for a completely believable hero here, remarkable considering the multitude of different states she finds herself in. Whether she’s dancing in a club or curling up with the conservation research she’s using to keep a restless mind occupied, there’s a matter-of-factness and a simplicity to her performance that never crosses the line into showy awards-bait.
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The film’s willingness to walk the path less trodden is admirable, too. Rona’s journey isn’t made up of straight lines – more than once a character reminds her of the old mantra, “one day at a time”, and her recovery feels slow and difficult enough that we can feel that thought pulsing through her head alongside the drum and bass she blasts to keep the bad thoughts at bay.
It’s also far from just a film about alcoholism and recovery. Watching her father’s (Stephen Dillane) struggles with bipolar disorder, the shadow of debilitating mental health conditions potentially locked in her genes makes Rona’s need to escape feel all the more pressing.
I can’t say if The Outrun is an accurate film about alcoholism. But it feels like an excellent one about fear – that’s something we all know plenty about.
The Outrun is in UK cinemas now.
