Review: Ronan is at her best in ‘The Outrun’

At first, it’s a shock. Is that really Saoirse Ronan playing a blackout drunk with a violent temper, scraping rock bottom as she staggers into a London pub at closing time, eager to slurp down leftover drinks and kicking and screaming when a bartender drops her in a gutter? This from the actress who starred in the wholesome “Little Women.” What gives?
What gives is “The Outrun,” an addiction drama now only in theaters where you can watch Ronan transcend the dreary boilerplate tropes of the genre on the strength of an emotional powerhouse of a performance that should rank her high in the Oscar race for Best Actress.
Ronan, who just turned 30 in April, already has four Academy Award nominations to her credit, starting with “Atonement” when she was just 13, and continuing with “Brooklyn,” “Lady Bird,” and then aforementioned “Little Women.” That was enough for the New York Times to include the Irish virtuoso on its list of the “the greatest actors of the 21st century.”
Ronan is at her searching, sensational best in “The Outrun” in the change-of-pace role of Rona, a biologist living in London with her boyfriend Daynin (the excellent Paapa Essiedu), who grows increasingly impatient with the destructive hardcore party girl Rona has become.
After a harrowing stint in rehab, where she announces, “I cannot be sober,” Rona heads home to Scotland’s Orkney Islands, where her separated parents trigger childhood trauma she turned to drink to escape. Her fanatically religious mother, Annie (Saskia Reeves), works on a sheep farm, while her bipolar father, Andrew (Stephen Dillane), suffers delusional mood swings.
In adapting Amy Liptrot’s bestselling memoir, director Nora Fingscheidt—whose two previous features, “System Crasher” and “The Unforgivable,” also examine women in crisis—confusingly swings back and forth in time, leaving us to find our bearings by watching Rona change her hair color—blue in London and orange as she attempts recovery on the islands.
Admittedly, this setup sounds TV-movie familiar and off-putting. All signs point to another 12-step cliché-fest complete with agonizing therapy and gut-wrenching rehab before the final fade to redemption.
And it is all that until Rona finds a path to recovery by moving to the remotest part of the islands, where she takes on an assignment from the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds to search for an endangered species of corncrakes. It’s here that Rona’s communion with nature, including the seals that seek shelter on the Orkneys, leads her to find a way ahead.
Ronan, who acted as a producer on the film along with her actor husband Jack Lowden, makes every moment feel intimate and epic. Rona often refers to the lore of the selkies, mythic creatures said to transform from seal to human in the pale moonlight. And suddenly, “The Outrun” escapes the trap of recovery platitudes and soars into an ethereal, elemental plane.
Of course, everything rests on Ronan’s uncanny ability to take us to places we’ve never been before. That she does with meticulous attention to subtle detail. There’s nothing of the showoff in her performance, nothing fake or actressy. That’s what makes Ronan unique and unforgettable. And so, when it’s flying on the wings of her artful magic, is “The Outrun.”