Rating: R | Runtime: 118 minutes
Release Date: September 27th, 2024 (UK) / October 4th, 2024 (USA)
Studio: StudioCanal / Sony Pictures Classics
Director(s): Nora Fingscheidt
Writer(s): Nora Fingscheidt & Amy Liptrot / Amy Liptrot & Nora Fingscheidt and Daisy Lewis (story) / Amy Liptrot (memoir)

I can’t be happy sober.

You must pay attention to the hair. There’s blonde Rona (Saoirse Ronan) back when she’s dating Daynin (Paapa Essiedu) and gradually falling prey to her addiction. Then there’s blue-haired Rona when she’s succumbed fully to alcoholism. Finally, there’s blonde with blue ends Rona when she’s walking her path towards sobriety. The first two styles are in London. The third takes place in Scotland’s Orkney Islands with her separated parents (Stephen Dillane’s Andrew and Saskia Reeves’ Annie). And we move back and forth through them as Rona attempts to heal her emotional wounds, face past demons, and move towards a future of possibility.

Directed and co-written by Nora Fingscheidt from co-writer Amy Liptrot’s memoir of the same name, The Outrun unfolds with the usual melodrama that comes from such experiences. There are pre-rehab struggles as she pushes Daynin and her friends away. Coping with boredom on her father’s farm and frustration with her mother’s newfound embrace of God. And, as the flashbacks to happier times and rock bottom grow steadier, the weakness of being unable to hang on. It’s especially hard when the quiet calm comes with parents prone to noise via too much affection (Mom) and too little (Dad when he’s struggling manic-depressive spells that kept him in and out of institutions her whole life).

The shifts in time are interesting thematically in that we often don’t see the full picture until its impact will prove most powerful from the addition of everything else. They also make it so stretches of the film drag because there’s nothing going on while we wait. It makes sense, though, considering we’re following a character lost in the deafening silence of addiction’s desire. We’re craving excitement as much as Rona is, knowing that it might make things worse once it arrives. That’s the balance. How to manage the highest highs and lowest lows without succumbing to either. And even as the captioned tally of sober days grows, it only takes one misstep to start back at zero.

I found the film was strongest once that misstep occurs because it’s the one portion that feels “now.” When she’s on that initial road to recovery, it’s still new and uncertain and we don’t really see any of the work (at least not yet). So, it’s drunk Rona to sober Rona with the flip of a switch. Then it’s back and forth in a montage that renders her new life as fleeting as the memories of her tragic descent. To therefore watch the relapse and see her retreat even further knowing that the stress of being home was just as triggering as the stress of living in London means we can finally see her attempt to live. Daynin can’t be her crutch. Mom and Dad can’t either. Going to Papa Westray Island means relying solely on herself to rebuild from the ground up.

It’s an impactful journey even with the lulls that ultimately brings us to a point in Rona’s life where she’s truly severed the past to find a new identity without the alcohol. That third act is probably the slowest as a result since Papa Westray is intentionally drama-free beyond its heavy gales of wind, but it’s also the most emotionally resonant because she’s making new memories detached from the trauma of her old ones. And you can’t go wrong when Ronan is delivering one of her most three-dimensional performances amidst those ebbs and flows. Because we see her Rona at her best and worst through the first two acts while understanding neither is real. Only at the end is she unencumbered by expectations and vices. Only then is she truly free.

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SAOIRSE RONAN as Rona, SASKIA REEVES as Annie in ‘The Outrun’ Image: Yunus Roy Imer. Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics.