The Out­run review – sen­sa­tion­al­ly direct­ed and performed

In a pas­sage from her acclaimed mem­oir, The Out­run, author Amy Lip­trot describes the free­ing feel­ing of down­ing a ​“mouth­ful of obliv­ion.” She is speak­ing of the gid­dy temp­ta­tion to throw in the tow­el on her road to sobri­ety. She spent much of her twen­ties liv­ing in Lon­don, booz­ing her days away and engag­ing in ruinous behav­iour. To alle­vi­ate the spi­ralling lone­li­ness, she returned to the place where she grew up, Scotland’s Orkney Islands, to grap­ple not only with her alco­holism but to recon­nect with her reli­gious moth­er and father who has Bipo­lar Disorder. 

Direc­tor Nora Fin­gschei­dt adapt­ed the nov­el with Lip­trot who has made cer­tain changes so the cen­tral char­ac­ter Rona (Saoirse Ronan) is slight­ly dis­tanced from the per­son­al account in the book. Fin­gschei­dt has proven direc­to­r­i­al flair when it comes to plac­ing the view­er into the mind­set of her char­ac­ters as seen in her astound­ing film about a young girl in care Sys­tem Crash­er. From the very start of The Out­run, as the blue-haired Rona wob­bles around a bar at last orders des­per­ate­ly cling­ing to the con­nec­tion she craves, the direc­tor crafts a grip­ping­ly vis­cer­al expe­ri­ence that leads the audi­ence through the head­space of a woman’s attempts to bring order back into her life. 

The film switch­es between the good and bad times, like a dizzy­ing playlist shuf­fling through mem­o­ries of nos­tal­gia, youth­ful aban­don, anni­hi­la­tion and accep­tance. Fin­gschei­dt uses noise and nature as a way to enhance the emo­tions Rona is fac­ing. Hazy drunk­en­ness and emo­tion­al con­fronta­tions are accom­pa­nied with blasts of music (pro­vid­ed by John Gürtler and Jan Mis­erre) and nat­ur­al sounds. Waves crash­ing against the shores of Papa Westray, where Rona takes up a job with the RSPB, may tread too close to the metaphor of weath­er­ing the storm, but it works well to evoke the harsh environment. 

What trans­lates well from the nov­el is the speci­fici­ty of the set­ting. All the details about birds, nature and Celtic mythol­o­gy of the islands are either nar­rat­ed by a spell­bind­ing Ronan or por­trayed cre­ative­ly through ani­ma­tion. Fin­gschei­dt also bal­ances the cliché asso­ci­at­ed with films about addic­tion with humour and mag­nif­i­cent detail. The way in which she por­trays the AA com­mu­ni­ty of the Orkney Islands, all old­er men sport­ing chunky knits nes­tled beside a tiny young woman, stands out in its depic­tion of inti­ma­cy and vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty. As does anoth­er scene in which Rona des­per­ate­ly tries to form a con­nec­tion with a ran­dom young man she pass­es on the street. 

Refuge comes in the form of Rona final­ly becom­ing com­fort­able in her own skin, and Fin­gschei­dt exam­ines this with pierc­ing visu­al and son­ic com­mand, as Rona even­tu­al­ly con­ducts her sur­round­ings like an accom­plished composer.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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