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Saoirse Ronan amazes with her blatant alcoholism story

Saoirse Ronan amazes with her blatant alcoholism story


The four-time Oscar nominee plays an alcoholic trying to get her act together.

Saoirse Ronan, a four-time Oscar nominee before she turned 30 earlier this year, delivers another impeccable performance in “The Outrun” as an alcoholic trying to put the pieces of her life back together.

Ronan plays Rona, who hails from the Orkney Islands, a remote archipelago off the north coast of Scotland. She returns home after a decade of alcohol-related mishaps in London, shown to viewers in flashback as director Nora Fingscheidt plays with the story's timeline like a deck of cards that she shuffled and hastily but purposefully reassembled.

We see Rona, who has a master's degree in biology, mentally checking out at work and falling on the floor in bars. We see her relationship with her boyfriend Daynin (Paapa Essiedu) fall apart after one too many drunken nights and broken bottles. She struggles with her deeply religious mother Annie (Saskia Reeves) and struggles with her bipolar father Andrew (Stephen Dillane). Her path takes her to AA courses and eventually back to the Orkney Islands, where she settles into a tiny caravan and tries to regain control of what is left of her life.

In her barren seaside abode amidst the crashing waves, it feels like she's drying out at the end of the world. But she retains her deep connection to nature and especially to the seals, whose cries of freedom she imitates, giving her a sense of unity with the world around her. This spiritual connection is highlighted in Fingscheidt and Amy Liptrot's screenplay, which is based on Liptrot's own memoirs.

On Rona's journey to sobriety, reflected in the gradual dyeing of her hair, Ronan is stunning as always. It would be an act of nature if she didn't, and her work here is as raw, lived and honest as expected. “The Outrun” is her symphony, which she conducts with an unwaveringly calm hand until the last note.

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“The Outrun”

Grade: B+

Rated R: for language and brief sexuality

Running time: 118 minutes

In the cinema

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