‘The Outrun’ Review: Saoirse Ronan is Towering in Sensitive Yet Uneven Recovery Drama | Telluride

At the 51st Telluride Film Festival, Saoirse Ronan became one of the youngest actors to be recognized with the prestigious Silver Medallion, honoring her versatile body of work. Since Ronan’s Academy Award-nominated breakthrough role as the naïve and inquisitive Briony Tallis in Atonement, she’s collected three additional Oscar nominations for Best Actress (two from her collaborations with Greta Gerwig) while establishing herself as one of her generation’s greatest talents. Her memorable performances in Lady Bird and Little Women may be her most recognizable, but Ronan’s latest film (which she also produced), The Outrun, finds the actress in her most transformative role yet. 

Adapted from Amy Liptrot’s memoir of the same name, The Outrun follows Rona ( Ronan), a 29-year-old biologist in London suffering from an alcohol addiction. The film’s opening scene sees her on the brink of a blackout in a local pub–it’s closing time and she winds up with an absolutely gnarly black eye. Her downward spiral and subsequent falling out with her boyfriend Daynin (Paapa Essiedu, I May Destroy You) lead her back home to the idyllic Orkney Isles and a residential rehabilitation program. She hasn’t been home in nearly ten years, so the adjustment is a bit difficult, as it’s revealed that Rona’s father (Stephen Dillane, Game of Thrones) has suffered from bipolar disorder since she was a child. Away from the temptations of the city, she finds solace in connecting with nature again by tending to the lambs on her father’s farm and leaning back into her academic passion: studying the local wildlife. 

Director Nora Fingscheidt (The Unforgivable, System Crasher) finds herself in a space familiar to the worlds of her earlier works, confronting the systems and elements that can make life difficult for women. In The Outrun, Fingscheidt follows a more experimental approach though, incorporating animated sequences and non-fiction footage of the Islands within the film’s framework. These sequences work loosely in connecting Rona’s struggle with addiction to the land that continues to inspire her and provide refuge from city life. Fingscheidt also includes an extensive voiceover of Rona sharing mythological stories (“In Ireland, people who’ve drowned turn into seals”) and biological facts about the land. While these references are a bit too frequent, their earnestness is often touching, showing Rona as a character with dimension and a passion necessary to help heal her relationship with alcohol. Fingscheidt also veers away from a traditional narrative structure in favor of a nonlinear timeline with markers of her sobriety sprinkled in (117 days, 152 days, 0 days). It’s a smart idea on paper, reflecting how a journey to recovery may never exactly feel straightforward, with past actions bleeding into the present. In execution, though, it somewhat dulls the power of Rona’s ability to overcome obstacles. The only clue to cling to is her changing hair color, shifting from bright blue to fully blonde to blonde with blue tips to bright orange. It’s an excellent detail highlighting Rona’s eccentricities, with that bright blue hair acting as an extension of the chilly sea off the coast and reflecting her resilience. 

Despite the script’s somewhat tricky narrative structure, Ronan is towering in the role, illustrating Rona as a young woman who is ferocious and delicate, vulnerable and strong. A standout scene occurs when she wakes up after a particularly rough night out. She doesn’t remember crying at the bar over her lost necklace, breaking bottles in her apartment, or why she has a makeshift bandage wrapped around her bloody hand. She pleads with Daynin to stay with her, promising that she’ll never drink again. He’s heard that all before, but it doesn’t stop her from trying desperately. In the film’s explosive moments, Ronan is absolutely fearless as a performer, not shying away from Rona’s volatility and unpredictability. Her performance also has a quiet power in the more subtle moments. When she’s at the grocery store on the island, we catch her briefly eyeing the bottles of wine behind the counter, aching to add one to her basket. Small moments like these display her brilliance as an actor, and comparisons will certainly be made to Gena Rowlands’ transcendent performance as Mabel Longhetti in A Woman Under the Influence. While The Outrun doesn’t measure up to Cassavetes’ work, Ronan channels Rowlands beautifully through her lived-in, honest rendering of her character’s joys and struggles. 

Fingscheidt and cinematographer Yunus Roy Imer capture Rona’s relapse and drunken flashbacks through a shaky camera with a blurred lens, with distorted images and sounds that recall most addiction dramas. The script, penned by Fingscheidt and the book’s author, Amy Liptrot, also makes fairly clunky observations related to Rona’s mother (Saskia Reeves, Slow Horses) and her newfound love of God and her father’s mood swings and their possible effects on Rona’s addiction. While these ideas are simply introduced and not explored with much depth, Ronan tackles the scenes with grace, painfully exposing the difficulty of having a parent with a mental illness. Despite some of these clichés, The Outrun never takes pleasure in Rona’s pain or delights in her stumbles and instead reveals her as a force of nature. She’s someone who is, like the Orkney Isles, flawed but beautiful, grounded yet untethered. 

During one of Rona’s meetings in rehab, it’s her turn to share how she’s feeling with the rest of the group. She doesn’t share a significant life story–Fingscheidt has done that throughout the film already. Instead, she simply says, “I miss it. I miss how good it made me feel.” Throughout The Outrun, Fingscheidt and Ronan depict just how good Rona thinks alcohol makes her feel before displaying her transcendent connection to nature. It isn’t just an academic interest for Rona but something that evolves into a mystical element that’s teased through the film’s mythological animated interludes. As she dances in her tiny cottage or echoes the noises from seals in the sea, Fingscheidt captures Rona’s healing homecoming as the character’s own evolution. Within her solitude on the majestic, remote Isles, she’s finally found something that truly makes her feel good. 

Grade: B

This review is from the 2024 Telluride Film Festival. Sony Pictures Classics will release The Outrun theatrically in the U.S. on October 4.