Director: Nora Fingscheidt
Cast: Saoirse Ronan, Paapa Essiedu, Nabil Elouahabi, Izuka Hoyle, Lauren Lyle, Saskia Reeves, Stephen Dillane
Screenplay: Nora Fingscheidt, Amy Liptrot, Daisy Lewis
118 mins. Rated R for language and brief sexuality.

There’s an abundance of films about drug use, abuse, rehabilitation, and attempts at sobriety. Inherently, this type of film survives mainly in how they stand aside from the pack, how they rise above the others. With Saoirse Ronan (Lady Bird) leading The Outrun, I became fascinated at how she’d tackle this type of story and make it her own. As per usual with Ronan, she surprised me once again.

Rona (Ronan), just out of rehab, is now living in the Orkney Islands, near her separated father and mother. As she tries to unpack her childhood trauma and make sense of what brought her to this place at the tail end of her 20s, she also has to compete with that ever-present wanting to drink, which hides behind every memory.

As stated earlier, Ronan’s performance is the maker of the film, specifically in how she handles that addiction post-rehab, when it appears to be most difficult to avoid. She has an anger and sadness that persists through the narrative. Her work is intimate and tender and has bursts of (understandable) anger. I think a great number of us have questioned the current state of our lives before, and she has so much reason to do so. Stephen Dillane (Zero Dark Thirty) also stands out as Rona’s father Andrew, a man suffering from mental health difficulties that mirror his daughter’s journey.

The Outrun also occasionally rises above the pack with its dream narrative-like narration from Ronan as she makes connections to the mystical and cultural importance of the sea and the islands and the legends of mythical beasts within the confines of a fairly simple tale of addiction and sobriety. It isn’t enough to completely stand apart from other similar films, but it helps.

Something else that tends to get overlooked when dealing with films about alcohol addiction tends to be the relapse, and perhaps that is because relapse isn’t really character growth and it’s difficult to tackle a character overcoming addiction twice, but Rona is the type of character who has to overcome it again just to understand that each day is a battle that she’ll hopefully get better at dealing with in time.

Yes, The Outrun tackles addiction with a few interesting wrinkles that don’t often get touched upon, but the film is spreading out in a number of directions that I don’t think ended creating a wholly focused and singular piece of work. It’s adding a few things to the discussion, but it still feels similar to so many other movies about addiction, and the things it’s adding don’t feel like they are making as much of an impact. I liked Ronan’s narration and discussion about the Irish myths in relation to herself, but they didn’t feel connected in the way that director and co-screenwriter Nora Fingscheidt is going for. There’s a lot of narrative flourishes like these but they ended up feeling like afterthoughts.

While The Outrun makes an effort to find its own path, it is mildly successful in crafting a unique voice and character in Rona. Though I felt a lack of cohesion in the finished product, there’s a lot to like about the central performance, the actual introduction of relapse post-rehab, and some of the storytelling ideas that the filmmaker is going for, even when they don’t feel purposeful.

3/5
-Kyle A. Goethe