Film Pick of the Week: The Outrun - review by Yvette Huddleston

Ronan plays Rona, a young woman who was born to English parents on Orkney. Now in her late twenties she is a post-graduate student and has been living in London where she has enjoyed an exciting lifestyle of hard work and hard partying. However, her increasing dependence on alcohol has become a worry for her friends and colleagues and is poisoning her relationship with caring partner Daynin (Paapa Essiedu). After a particularly bleak incident one night – she leaves a pub so drunk that she puts herself in danger and is violently assaulted by a stranger – Rona realises that she needs to get some help.

After entering a rehab programme, during which she candidly admits to the rest of the group that she misses the way alcohol makes her feel and confides to a fellow addict that: “I don’t think I can be happy sober”, she makes some progress and decides to go back to Orkney for a while. Her family situation there is complicated – she stays with her mother Annie (Saskia Reeves) who has found religion since she separated from Rona’s father Andrew (Stephen Dillane). Annie was no longer able to cope with Andrew’s bipolar episodes (made worse by his drinking) and, having sold their farmhouse, he is now living in a caravan while still farming their land.

Rona finds living with her mother difficult – her frequent references to praying for her daughter don’t help – but life with her father would be too chaotic, and in a caravan full of alcohol, potentially disastrous. She finds a way through by listening to and engaging with nature – the wild, rugged beauty of Orkney allows space for reflection and healing. She gets a job with the RSPB and is enrolled on a project surveying corncrakes and their habitats. She finds and rents a tiny cottage on the remote island of Papay, far from people, distractions and temptations. It proves to be an important step in her recovery. Interwoven with the main narrative of Rona’s journey to sobriety are visceral flashbacks to the worst phase of her addiction. Ronan finds authenticity in every scene; her portrayal of the pain, tough reckoning and vulnerability involved in overcoming addiction is incredibly moving.