Based on the hit 2016 memoir by Amy Liptrot, The Outrun is meditative, slow-rising portrait of a young woman’s recovery from alcohol addiction-induced rock bottom in which she finds increasing solace and succour in the healing powers of nature.
Saoirse Ronan stars as Rona (an fictionalised avatar for Liptrot, who co-authored the screenplay with director Nora Fingscheidt), an Orkney Islander whose hedonistic student lifestyle in London has spiralled out of control to the expense of her Biology MA, personal relationships and physical/mental health - forcing a reluctant return to the remote, wind and waves-blasted Scottish isles she was once so desperate to escape.
Fingscheidt’s highly textured film introduces us to Rona while firmly in the grip of her alcoholism. Lingering in a bar after closing time, the intoxicated late 20-something is determinedly ‘minesweeping’ any and all leftover drinks while treating the staff to a full whirlwind of emotions/attitudes from playfully sweet to violent belligerence as they attempt to get her off the premises.
Literally dumped onto the pavement outside, it already seems like a painful and depressing end to this particular evening. However, as the film flashes back and forwards between her spiral of addiction and subsequent slow clamber up the rocky beach of recovery, we discover much worse was to follow: a traumatic, violent event which becomes the springboard for Rona’s attempt at sobriety amid the rugged, salt-encrusted beauty of her homeland.
“I miss it - I miss how good it made me feel,” she confesses in a flashback to a successful stint in rehab prior to returning home.
“I can’t be happy sober.”
Many young adults forced to return to their family homes following a stint of independent living find this regression a difficult and humiliating experience, but for Rona, her shaky sobriety and already complicated relationship with her parents - Rona’s mum, Annie (Saskia Reeves), is a devout Christian whose beliefs clash with Rona’s determinedly atheistic outlook, while her dad, Andrew (Stephen Dillane) struggles with bipolar disorder - provide further irritants even as she distracts herself with the daily routine of hard work on the family’s sheep farm.
Privacy is also in short supply amid small island communities, where everybody knows everybody else’s business, a factor contributing to Rona’s decision to remove herself even further from both strands of her old life.
A flirtation with the Islands’ nature via a summer job studying Orkney’s endangered corncrake population has sparked a renewed fascination with the local flora and fauna Rona was enchanted by as a sketch-mad child.
Now, she finds kindred spirits in birds, seals and jellyfish surviving in the harshest of conditions, the island’s howling gales and crashing waves only temporarily drowned out by the techno blasting through her headphones - a sonic link to the hedonistic abandon of the scenes revealing her London clubbing days - while roaming the clifftops and beaches.
Rona finds kindred spirits in birds, seals and jellyfish surviving in the harshest of conditions, the island’s howling gales and crashing waves only temporarily drowned out by the techno blasting through her headphones
It’s while living in splendid isolation (with the odd visit from friendly, caring locals) in an old cottage on the tiny island of Papa Westray - population 80 - with little to do besides restorative wild swimming, tracking aircraft and ships online (apparently Papa has decent wi-fi) and starting a seaweed collection, that this troubled soul is finally able to pull focus on what she has survived and where life might take her next.
All the supporting turns in The Outrun are top drawer, with Paapa Essiedu making the most of his limited screen time as Rona’s empathetic and long-suffering partner, Daynin. Essiedu effectively conveys the escalating pain, confusion and heartbreak his character experiences as the Orcadian’s growing alcoholism gradually drives a wedge between them with each disastrous booze-fuelled incident.
However, The Outrun belongs to Ronan, who gets so deeply under the skin and inside the head of her character that she’s never less than 100 per cent convincing, both as a drunk on a rollercoaster of addiction and as a scared, newly sober survivor attempting to recalibrate her life.
Fingscheidt and her cinematographer Yunus Roy Imer ensure that the bright lights of Hackney and the wind and salt spray-blasted wilds of the Orkneys are their own characters within the film, bringing the highs and lows of both settings to life in an absorbing combination of inventive visuals and stirring sound design which morph subtly and sympathetically in tune with Rona’s evolving situation.
It’s a two-hour picture which takes its time in telling the often fairly grim story at hand (obviously, much of The Outrun will be hugely triggering for those who have experienced similar trauma), but Ronan and co ensure we are invested enough in these characters to stick with them through thick and thin.
While the title is referenced in-film as Scots slang for the outlying fields on a farm, it also holds a second meaning for its troubled central character: wherever you go, there you are.
Happily, as Rona discovers, there are some places which really can help you leave the past behind.
