THE OUTRUN is Saoirse Ronan’s film. She isn’t just the protagonist, she also produced the film based on the autobiographical book of British journalist Amy Liptrop. Her enthusiasm for the project is palpable in every scene.

Alcoholic and unemployed biologist Rona (Saoirse Ronan) returns to the Orkney Islands at 30 in order to get sober and help her mentally ill father with his sheep after experiencing her rock bottom in London. She lives with her deeply devout mother and is badly hurt. Memories of her difficult childhood in Orkney, her life in London, and her relationship with Daynin (Paapa Essiedu), which ended because of her alcoholism, keep coming back to her present. There is also Rona's voice-over, where she talks about the biological basis of addiction, the lifestyle of the corncrake, geological shifts in Orkney, the wind, and other themes. Everything is connected to her own experience and body: an orgasm, an earthquake. Whether someone finds that to be profound or rather an experience of the typical megalomania of a (sober) alcoholic is a question of personal experience, and also one’s own experience with drunkenness and addiction.

Nora Fingscheidt (SYSTEMSPRENGER) portrays Rona’s experience as a sensual experience. Fingscheidt’s penchant for using the stylistic devices of Italian giallo is evident, among other things, in a scene in which Rona, standing at the stone circle "Ring of Brodgar" on Orkney at night, thinks about her first encounter with Daynin in a London club. A pan and a change of color from the dark blue of the night to the warm violet of the club lights, and the camera, like Rona's thoughts, is in the midst of London's party life.

THE OUTRUN has great scenes for the protagonist who plays different stages of drunkenness, the shock of the morning after, the desperation, the breakdowns, the difficult discipline, the loneliness, and the yearning for contact and ecstasy. Saoirse Ronan is a very precise actress, but her precision is more visible in small scenes rather than the big showy moments. When she goes shopping on a small island and also buys tobacco along with the food, the camera shows shelves filled with wine and schnapps behind the shop owner. In the cutaway, Rona packs up her tobacco and takes a tiny look at the booze, and in this tiny moment Ronan places the whole conflict of her character: not wanting to look at it at all, then looking anyway because she thinks she can bear it or because she is just telling herself that and immediately feels the desire for the high, for the release from everyday life through the first sip from the first glass.

Tom Dorow (INDIEKINO MAGAZIN)

Translation: Elinor Lewy