Not yet 30 and already with four Oscar nominations to her name, Saoirse Ronan may yet be up for a fifth for this towering turn as Rona, a chaotic alcoholic attempting to recentre herself back home on wind-blasted Orkney.
We meet Rona already a few sheets to the wind in an emptying London bar. Steadily helping herself to all the unfinished drinks, she’s gently managed to the door by the barman. It’s a portal through which she is eventually dragged by a considerably less patient bouncer, tipping her and her possessions onto the pavement. When a car pulls up and a stranger offers her a lift, you know in your bones that no good will come of it.
The harm caused by Rona’s self-destructive spiral is painfully etched on the face of her loving partner, Daynin, played by I May Destroy You’s Paapa Essiedu. Instantly believable as a young couple with high hopes, it’s grim to see the increasingly mean Rona pushing Daynin away after a rock-bottom crash of broken glass and spilled blood on their kitchen floor.
Not that Rona’s retreat home is without its trials. Her farmer father (Stephen Dillane) has struggled with depression related to his bipolar diagnosis since she was a young girl. In a film full of departures, this pressure drove her mother (Saskia Reeves) from him and into the arms of the particular brand of happy-clappy religion favoured by the Scottish Isles. Smothered by their burdens, Rona skips out again, finding solace in one of the isles’ barely inhabited outcrops. Here she can finally lose herself to the beats she once spun drunkenly to in clubs, but now blasts on headphones while inspecting flotsam and jetsam on blustery beaches.
Lit up in a glow of stormy sea spray, Orkney is majestic – as is Saoirse Ronan
The Outrun is adapted by Scottish journalist Amy Liptrot from her own searingly honest memoir, with German director Nora Fingscheidt as co-writer. Fingscheidt handles her true-life traumas with great care, but without sparing us any of the harsh realities of recovery.
It’s formally bold, too, breaking up the stepping stones towards sobriety with narrated interludes in which Ronan – affecting a decent Scottish accent – waxes lyrical on topics from the island’s myths of shapeshifting selkies to the fate of the endangered corncrake bird. The latter is something of a talismanic presence here, alongside gently bobbing seals. Lit up in a glow of stormy sea spray, Orkney is majestic. As is the mighty Ronan.
In UK and Irish cinemas Sep 27, 2024.
