The Out­run – first-look review

Nora Fin­gschei­dt is carv­ing out a bit of a niche for sto­ries about trou­ble women exist­ing in dif­fi­cult cir­cum­stances. Her wide­ly cel­e­brat­ed debut, Sys­tem Crash­er, focused on a young child strug­gling in the Ger­man care sys­tem, while her flawed Eng­lish lan­guage debut Unfor­giv­able saw San­dra Bul­lock play a woman recent­ly released from prison attempt­ing to rebuild her life. Plus ça change in The Out­run, based on Amy Liptrott’s mem­oir of the same name, in which Saoirse Ronan gives a fine turn as a young woman in alco­holism recov­ery who returns to her famil­ial home on the Orkney Isles.

Rona (Ronan) is a free-spir­it­ed 29-year-old biol­o­gist, who moved from the remote com­mu­ni­ty off the coast of Scot­land to Lon­don for uni­ver­si­ty. Her new­found free­dom ulti­mate­ly proved detri­men­tal, and she devel­oped a pen­chant for par­ty­ing which turned into an alco­hol depen­den­cy. After her part­ner Daynin (Paa­pa Essiedu) leaves her, she attends a rehab pro­gramme with hopes of get­ting clean.

Her recov­ery moves Rona to vis­it her divorced par­ents in the tran­quil iso­la­tion of their island home, more than a decade after she left. It’s revealed they sep­a­rat­ed in part due to her father Andrew’s (Stephen Dil­lane) bipo­lar dis­or­der and because her moth­er Ann (Sask­ia Reeves) found God. She stays with her moth­er while help­ing her father with the lamb­ing sea­son on his farm, try­ing to make sure he’s tak­ing care of him­self while decid­ing what she wants to do with her future.

Although the film draws a clum­sy con­nec­tion between her father’s men­tal ill­ness and Rona’s alco­holism with­out actu­al­ly get­ting into the specifics of how exact­ly genet­ics influ­ence our pre­dis­po­si­tion to addic­tive behav­iour, it’s a real chance for Ronan to sink her teeth into a role after a few years in quite mid­dling fair. It’s a per­for­mance that feels raw and stud­ied and avoids clich­es – Rona is not defined by her alco­holism, and even in a state of arrest­ed devel­op­ment, there’s a sense of her charis­ma and pas­sions, notably regard­ing her PhD. It’s also a com­pelling adver­tise­ment for the rugged beau­ty of Orkney, which appears wild at first, but warm and nur­tur­ing beneath the wind and rain. It’s a place that Rona seems reluc­tant to return to, but seems to have a heal­ing effect upon her as she dis­con­nects from the stres­sors of the Big Smoke.

The Out­run also empha­sis­es the impact of Rona’s addic­tion upon those close to her, whether it’s the gen­tle Daynin or her patient but con­cerned moth­er. Her lone­li­ness is par­tic­u­lar­ly sting­ing, and it feels as though Rona’s recov­ery hinges on her abil­i­ty to become more present with her­self, as well as the world around her.

Yet despite the strength of Ronan’s per­for­mance, The Out­run strug­gles to leave a last­ing impres­sion, cut from the same cloth as sim­i­lar dra­mas. Although Fin­gschei­dt deft­ly avoids falling into the trap of cre­at­ing inspi­ra­tional mis­ery porn, it’s a dra­ma that only paints in broad strokes, and as such fails to stand out in a crowd­ed field.