The Outrun (2024)

3 Stars (out of 4)

Bold Sober

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

Nora Fingscheidt's The Outrun is a heavy, dispiriting watch — riddled with flashbacks that sometimes confuse and jerk us out of the story — but it's also centered around a deeply committed, soul-searing performance by Saoirse Ronan, and has a selection of Scottish scenery so gorgeous that it makes things seem all right again. Ronan plays Rona, a girl from the Orkney Islands, who has tried to make a life in London. She has earned a master's degree in marine biology, but her reckless abuse of alcohol has caused her to lose everything, including her kind boyfriend Daynin (Paapa Essiedu). The first time we see her, she downs all the leftover drinks sitting around a bar that's trying to close up for the night. She's a nasty drunk, too, and reckless. She gets into brutal fights, usually with injuries, and one night gets into a car with a stranger and is lucky to come away with not much more than a black eye.

She joins AA and heads home to live, alternately, with her separated parents. Her mum (Saskia Reeves) is deeply religious, to the point that Rona can't understand it, and her father (Stephen Dillane) struggles with bipolar disorder. She gets a job searching for a rare bird, the "corn crake," and lives in humble little hovels and waits out storms. She relapses, talks with locals, goes to meetings, and even meets a boy for at least a one-night stand. It's based on a memoir by Amy Liptrot, who co-wrote the screenplay with Fingscheidt (a third writer, Daisy Lewis, is co-credited with the screen story), and Fingscheidt seems to tumble into it headlong, as if it were her own story, or anybody's. Rona's journey begins to feel hard-won, and very much worth the fight.