The Outrun

After ten years in London obtaining a masters in biology, but also becoming an alcoholic and entering rehab, Rona (Saoirse Ronan) returns to her childhood home of Scotland’s Orkney Island, living with her evangelical mother Annie (Saskia Reeves, TV's 'Slow Horses') and working on her bipolar father Andrew’s (Stephen Dillane) sheep farm as she tries to stay sober on “The Outrun.”
Laura's Review: B
Adapting Amy Liptrot’s memoir with the author, director Nora Fingscheidt ("System Crasher," "The Unforgivable") gives us a fractured character study consisting of childhood memories, the more recent London past; the Orkney present and Rona’s interior thoughts arranged in shuffle mode. It can be confusing until you get used to the rhythm, but Ronan’s performance shines through and Fingscheidt ties Orcadian myths, landscape and weather right into her psyche.
The film opens with Rona relating one of Orkney’s myths, that people who drown become seals known as selkies, who come ashore in human form at night to dance. And the Rona we first see is drowning, albeit in booze, emptying the drinks left in an Orkney pub its bartender is attempting to close for the night, eventually picking up the pugnacious aqua-tipped blond and physically throwing her out (as we will later learn this is her one big slip after a considerable spell of sobriety, the director’s decision to start here a bit baffling, keeping us off kilter for longer than necessary). We’ll next see her in what appears to be an unemployment center, her black eye unnerving her interviewer.
Rona’s hair shifting entirely to aqua signals a flashback and we begin to experience her relationship with Daynin (Paapa Essiedu, TV's 'I May Destroy You,' 'Gangs of London'), their love undone over the course of time by her escalating addiction, one she finally addresses with a stint in a tough love rehab which only 10% complete. On Orkney, Anne’s reliance on religion gets under Rona’s skin, the woman more at home on dad’s farm, but his own mental problems add to her stress and when he plunges into a catatonic depression, it sends Rona over the edge we witnessed at the beginning. She’ll secrete herself away on the remote Orkney island of Papay where, after indulging in a binge, she learns to live with herself, even enjoying a solo Christmas when flights are grounded.
Ronan takes Rona through the ringer, from manic drunk episodes to defiant deranged dancing to desperation, eventually finding herself by embracing nature (birthing lambs! swimming in a frigid sea!). After witnessing her telling Daynin she once believed her father could control the wind, we experience the childhood memory that inspired the idea, Andrew breaking windows during a ferocious gale, inviting the storm inside. That tempestuous streak will be found in Rona, who embraces her sobriety by ‘conducting’ the ocean surf. As her lover, Essiedu ranges from contentment to concern to defeat and we feel his pain.
Fingscheidt uses animation as Rona tells us about the Mester Stoor Worm, the monster which formed the Orkneys when its teeth fell out, and casts the mysterious island of Hether Blether in the mist, just like those who’ve claimed to see it describe. Cinematographer Yunus Roy Imer (“System Crasher”) switches color palettes from Orkney to London, the former cool, the latter more vibrant yet not as pleasing. John Gürtler´s and Jan Miserre´s (“System Crasher”) score uses Orkney’s wind, often mournful, a huge leap from the techno we hear whenever Rona’s wearing her headphones. But it is the call of the vanishing corncrake, the bird Rona is hired to document during a summer job for the RSPB, which fills Rona with joy and leaves us gladdened that this bright young woman has found her way out of her pain.
Robin's Review: B
Rona (Saoires Ronan) has lived her young life on the edge in London, but the booze, drugs and sex have forced her to make very drastic changes. She leaves her tenuous big-city life behind and returns to her family home on Scotland’s Orkney Islands to find a new direction, and maybe a new life, in “The Outrun.”
Saoirse Ronan gives a top-notch character study of a woman, on the road to self-destruction, who sees the error of her ways and is determined to redeem herself. Director Nora Fingscheidt tells Rona’s story in a series of flashbacks – to various points in her
past life – and flashes forward to the present and Rona trying for self-redemption.
That redemption comes in the form of her return home to the family sheep farm where she toils day to day and tries not to think about having a drink - or 20. Ronan does a fine job showing her struggles coping in the present, as well as the behavior that put her on the tough path to sobriety.
A problem I have is with the film’s structure and liberal use of flashbacks to various times in Rona’s life – with her bi-polar dad and bible-thumping mom when young and acting the hedonist when older. You can tell time passes by the degree of blue coloring Rona’s hair.
Ronan’s performance kicks in, when she returns home, as she battles her demons daily. The actor and the storyteller convey that struggle and keep the viewer guessing as to what path she will follow. It is not a cut and dried journey for Rona but you root for her all the way through.
Sony Pictures Classics releases "The Outrun" in theaters on 10/4/24.