Review: The Outrun – Cineuropa

The storm makes the house shake. The soft greenery that covers the rocky landscape is moistened by misty rain. The waves crash against the bastion of rocks, bursting into a visual spectacle of ocean spray. Scotland’s Orkney Islands are a sight to behold and the viewer gets plenty of opportunities to hold them in their hands. They are the refuge of the Rhone(Saoirse Ronan), who returned home after a ten-year stay in London, filled with drugs and alcohol. Here she is trying to overcome her illness.

After premiering at Sundance earlier this year, Outran (+also read:
interview: Nora Fingscheidt
movie file), Nora Fingscheidtadaptation Amy LiptrotThe European premiere of the best-selling memoir took place in the Panorama section of the 74th Berlinale. Liptrot, who has reigned since 2011, has chronicled her years in London, immersed in a life without restrictions but with plenty of addictive substances. Having completed a 90-day program in which the real revelation was an attempted rape after a night of excess, she or her film alter ego Rona returns home to Orkney to get away from it all – the temptation that the city is causing depression. “She can’t be happy without drinking,” Rona says one day. Therefore, her mission is to find a purpose, a plane of existence that will give her peace.

In Orkney, the viewer gets to see for the first time what could have caused Rhône to go so far overboard. While Fingscheidt refrains from ever portraying one of the most remote corners of the British Isles as lonely and boring, he has a father who suffers from schizophrenia and bipolar disorder (Stephen Dillane), which smoothly moves from concern to insult. And then there is the evangelist mother (Saskia Reeves) who often passively watches as Rona snaps at her and has no other choice but Jesus to help her daughter.

Fingscheidt, who co-wrote the script with Liptrot herself, eschews a strictly linear narrative. Rhona’s story is told by piecing together ideas, memories, and key events, allowing the viewer to piece together certain revelations later, thereby continually challenging the viewer’s preconceived picture of this limited setting and these handful of characters.

That being said, the way the storyline changes, coupled with the intensity of the moment, can be overwhelming and distracting. And although Ronan proves once again that she is one of the best actresses of her generation, the film offers too little. Much can be learned about Rona’s past, but almost nothing is known about her mind. Fingscheidt’s choice to use highly dynamic camera language, simulating the blurry, misguided vision of a drunken man, is more of a drag than actually a gateway into his protagonist. The second part of the story, tracking Rona’s interest in the islands’ fauna, feels at times like absolution in suspense, something that might be marked as the character’s final epiphany rather than one of her smoothly intertwined interests.

The conversation about drug and alcohol abuse is more pressing than ever, and few are as fortunate as Amy Liptrot to live a healthy, sober life. But overall the film offers little more than an affirmative “she did it!” a mentality caught up in an uneven narrative. Fingscheidt has made a career of portraying women in difficult mental and social circumstances. But until her breakthrough, System failure (+also read:
criticize
Bande announcement
interview: Nora Fingscheidt
movie file)had a visible guide thread, Outran It’s more like a set of ideas that should work on their own. This message needs further elaboration.

Outran was produced by the British companies Brock Media, Arcade Pictures and MBK Productions, as well as the German Weydemann Bros. and is sold internationally by Protagonist Pictures.