All the way back in January of this year, the 2023/24 awards season hadn’t even reached its marquee ceremonies before rumblings of how the 2024/25 race might play out. The culprit for this far-sightedness was The Outrun, which had just premiered at Sundance to solid reviews, almost all of which slated Saoirse Ronan as a shoo-in nominee in the next year or so. Now that it’s finally hit UK shores, I can say that, while maybe premature, this sort of chat was absolutely dead on. As recovering Orcadian alcoholic Rona, Ronan is absolutely phenomenal in the exact way Academy voters respond to, elevating a film around her that is otherwise far, far less remarkable.
Semi-fictionalising the memoir from Amy Liptrot, The Outrun bounces between time periods as it follows Rona’s struggle with sobriety up in the isolated Orkney Islands with her gossip-y, very religious mum (Saskia Reeves) and her bipolar dad (Stephen Dillane), flashing back to key moments of drunken disaster in London. It’s a structural conceit that Liptrot (adapting her own work) and director Nora Fingscheidt initially get good mileage out of – the changes in location keep things bouncing along and it’s a neat way of mirroring the way alcoholism stays with you even through sobriety – but does eventually start to get in the way of the pace in the story’s back half.
To put it simply, The Outrun is just too long, the final third in particular feeling like it’s left a lot of superfluous stuff in. Even with Ronan being magnetic throughout, this sluggish movement becomes frustrating, an annoyance added to by the simply awful narration that is a constant companion. Full of trite internal observations and a bunch of weirdly obvious bits of real-world trivia, not even Ronan can make it sound good.
It’s particularly odd because, elsewhere, the script (though hardly a masterpiece) is much lighter on its feet, brought to life by Ronan on top form. Drunk or sober, she finds the core of Rona in every scene; the neediness, the disappointment, the sparks of life that keep her going, and the moments in which Rona gets *too* drunk are often genuinely frightening, capturing the dangerous unpredictability that will be familiar to anyone who’s had some overly heavy nights out. The supporting cast, especially Paapa Essiedu as Rona’s increasingly hurt and desperate boyfriend back in London, are very solid too, but there’s never any doubt that this is Ronan’s show.
If anything does threaten to upstage her, it’s Orkney itself, which looks just magnificent through Fingscheidt and DOP Yunus Roy Imer’s lens. From gale force storms clattering against the rugged cliffs to foggy midnight fields to some really gorgeously peaceful underwater shots of seaweed and seals, we feel its power as a refuge just as much as Rona does. It’s in these moments of focus that The Outrun really finds its feet, putting an incredible performance in front of some incredible scenery – it’s just a shame that it also seems determined to trip itself up.
Jack Blackwell – Film Reviews 