Saoirse Ronan explores the ‘ugliness’ of addiction in ‘The Outrun’ at Sundance | Nation
The Outrun, a recovery memoir, has sold more than 100,000 copies in the United Kingdom alone, becoming a lifeline for countless readers struggling with alcoholism.
So when four-time Oscar nominee Saoirse Ronan picked up the book during quarantine, she had no doubt she wanted to help turn it into a film.
The resulting film premiered Friday at the Sundance Film Festival, with Ronan playing Amy Liptrot, a music journalist who returns home from her destructive life in London to the wild beauty of Scotland’s Orkney Islands to heal.
“It’s a topic I’ve always wanted to delve into at some stage, having had my own experience of it, as we all do,” Ronan told AFP.
“I knew that as an actor you have to play so many things—so many colors, so many ups and downs.”
In the film, Liptrot finds unexpected help in the stunning wildlife, rugged landscapes and crashing waves of her home islands – moments that intersect with memories of her destructive relationships with her partner, friends and family.
“I had to bring so much ugliness to this man,” said Ronan, who is also a producer on the film.
“When she’s at her worst, she’s quite cruel to the people closest to her, and I’ve never had the opportunity to do that.”
“I don’t think I would have been ready to take on a role like this even two or three years ago.”
Early reviews were full of praise, with IndieWire calling it both “a towering piece of landscape art” and a “raw character study.”
– ‘Love me!’ –
The film was among a busy schedule on the second day of Sundance, the influential independent film festival co-founded by Robert Redford that takes place in the Utah mountains each winter.
Also screened was the surreal sci-fi film Love Me, starring Kristen Stewart and Steven Yeun as an artificially intelligent buoy and orbiting satellite who begins a romance after humanity wipes itself off the face of the Earth.
Of course, the most original entry at this year’s festival, Love Me, asks whether artificial intelligence can feel loneliness or even love—and what it might think about humans long after we’ve left this planet.
Apparently, the only two surviving intelligent devices, the buoy and the satellite, are trying to overcome their loneliness by communicating over thousands of thousands and millions of years, creating an unlikely connection.
Creating their identities from scratch, they scour the Internet for information about a bygone human civilization, imitating the often outrageous and absurd human behavior they find on social media influencers’ accounts.
“For us, this is not really a movie about AI. But this is a movie about us, seen through the lens of AI,” co-director Andy Zucero said at the film’s world premiere in Utah on Friday.
“Something like trying to unpack humanity around 2024.”
Stewart and Yoon initially voice the buoy and satellite, but gradually appear on screen in different visual forms as the AI machines create their own bizarre metaverse.
“It’s about a world where we’re no longer here,” Stewart said on the red carpet.
Because performative Internet videos represent the only remaining imprint of humanity, “the echo we left is primarily cries of ‘Love me!'” the former “Twilight” star said.
Stewart will premiere the second film at Sundance on Saturday. “Love Lies Bleed” depicts a violent and criminal romance between a gym manager and a bisexual bodybuilder.
Sundance, a key launching pad for many of the year’s most anticipated independent films and documentaries, runs through January 28.
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