The Outrun

In Nora Fingscheidt’s drifting, dreamlike narrative, Saoirse Ronan excels as a lost spirit cut off from purpose and sobriety.

Life's a beach: Saoirse Ronan
Image courtesy of StudioCanal

An outrun is the Scottish word for a tract of outlying land reserved for grazing. And this particular outrun is perched on a cluster of islands, the Orkneys, off the north coast of Scotland. It would seem a telling metaphor for the remoteness, the desolation that Rona (Saoirse Ronan) feels. But can she outrun her fate? As she struggles with alcoholism (“I can’t be happy sober,” she insists), Rona finds a parallel connection with the ocean and of the folklore attached to it, of the seals that populate the islands as the reincarnation of those drowned at sea. The product of a broken home and a mother and father who escaped into their respective havens of religion and substance abuse, Rona sought solace in drink and London and the patient embrace of a young man, Daynin (Paapa Essiedu).

For her performance as the troubled and mercurial Rona, Saoirse Ronan has already been attracting Oscar buzz. The camera barely seems to be off her, whether framing her in penetrating close-ups or shadowing her off the stark, bleak coastline of Scotland. Ms Ronan would seem to be at home in this landscape, having haunted it so effectively in both On Chesil Beach and Ammonite and here lending even greater resonance to a soul divided by the longing for the liquid in a bottle and the liquid brine that lashes her homeland. Adapted from the memoir by the Scottish writer Amy Liptrot, the film is co-produced by Ronan and her husband Jack Lowden and marks the third directorial work of the German filmmaker Nora Fingscheidt. Fingscheidt, co-scripting with Liptrot, has created a sea fever dream of a narrative as the past and present flow into each other, between moments of high drama and recuperation, the mise en scène often reflecting Rona’s own fractured sense of awareness.

Pictorially, it is a haunting experience, and each performance beautifully calibrated, be it Stephen Dillane’s avuncular turn as Rona’s bipolar father or Saskia Reeves’ reasoned exasperation as Rona’s mother. Saoirse Ronan herself, signposting the switches in time by her changing hair colour, inhabits Rona to her soul, cheerfully withdrawn one moment and manically unhinged the next. An emotional and highly original cinematic poem, The Outrun is a striking gear change for Fingscheidt, whose first film was the intense German drama System Crasher and her second, the heart-wrenching American thriller The Unforgivable with Sandra Bullock. What they have in common, though, is a highly-charged drive and a narrative freshness.

There have been many cinematic forays into alcoholism, but this deeply personal account reflects the mindset of the sufferer from the inside out, pulling the viewer into the agony and even the occasional joys of the protagonist. Thus, we genuinely feel Rona’s confusion and need for solace at the bottom of a glass. But when she asks Daynin, “what did I do last night?”, we also feel his pain. “I’m not drinking anymore, I’m so sorry,” she promises. And he: “I’m so tired of you saying that.”

JAMES CAMERON-WILSON

Cast: Saoirse Ronan, Paapa Essiedu, Nabil Elouahabi, Izuka Hoyle, Lauren Lyle, Saskia Reeves, Stephen Dillane, Naomi Wirthner, Seamus Dillane, Tony Hamilton-Croft. 

Dir Nora Fingscheidt, Pro Sarah Brocklehurst, Dominic Norris, Jack Lowden and Saoirse Ronan, Screenplay Nora Fingscheidt and Amy Liptrot, Ph Yunus Roy Imer, Pro Des Andy Drummond, Ed Stephan Bechinger, Music John Gürtler and Jan Miserre, Costumes Grace Snell, Sound Oscar Stiebitz and Jonathan Schorr, Dialect coach Sarah McGuinness. 

BBC Film/Protagonist Pictures/Brock Media/Arcade Pictures-StudioCanal.
116 mins. UK/Germany. 2024. UK Rel: 27 September 2024. US Rel: 4 October 2024. Cert. 15.