'Outrun' review: Saoirse Ronan stars in a story of alcoholism and rehabilitation

In “The Outrun,” the alcoholism of a young Scottish woman is a personal catastrophe of environmental and geographic scope, which takes her to the end of the world, which is also the backyard of her childhood. The role of Rona is the kind of acting job that contains multitudes and that you should only trust to someone who commands a frame with ease, which is why director Nora Fingscheidt, in adapting co-writer Amy Liptrot's memoir, is lucky to Let Saoirse Ronan know how to do it. do more than defend themselves from the stunning remoteness of the windswept Orkney archipelago.

The problem is that Ronan is also forging his compelling portrait of destruction and recovery in another kind of gale, that of undisciplined cinema at odds with the patient collection of characterizations. A camera that wants to be as drunk as the self-destructive figure it's supposed to observe, plus sloppy time jumps and interludes of encyclopedic narratives about science and myth that take us away from the central performance, results in an ultimately unstable partner. – no matter how well-intentioned, and even occasionally effective, Fingscheidt's handling of this material. A relentless commitment to poetic transcendence is more likely to tire than to take off.

Rona may come from a sheep farm in the Northern Isles, but as a twenty-something studying biology in London, her life is one long, eventful journey until one particularly chaotic night ends with a mugging – the fulcrum of this narrative. as we move forward and backward. . After an intensive 90-day program, she returns to Orkney to base her new sobriety on a taste of home: bracing air, childbirth, seal sightings, volunteering in nature reserves and walks along the rocky coast in a cocoon that protects your headphones. of techno music.

But staying with her quiet, religious mother (an excellent Saskia Reeves) while helping her farmer father (Stephen Dillane), who is bipolar, there is a constant reminder that she comes from dysfunction, illness and divorce as much as a place of grandeur and serenity. Her party memories inevitably land on the embarrassing fact that her uncontrolled drinking ruined things with the man she loved, Daynin (Paapa Essiedu), a character ill-served by being absorbed in temporal fragments.

In fact, one struggles to fully understand what the origin of Rona's free spirit is all about, since in Fingscheidt everything is a mood: music, sound, ambient editing. Fingscheidt, a German filmmaker with a background in documentaries, has lately turned to social dramas focused on fixing people plagued by turmoil (the angry-kids-starring film “System Crasher” and the prison redemption story “The Unforgivable,” starring Sandra Bullock). She makes sure we're always there with Rona, but it's an easy follow-up; We never land anywhere long enough (before or after rehab) to feel layered pain or the hard tick, tick, tick of genuine progress.

Despite Yunus Roy Imer's splendid cinematography, whether in landscape mode or landscape of a face, this is the montage of a life. And while Ronan is nothing less than a fully present actress, capable of fully charging a moment with coiling energy or the freckled melancholy of her Modigliani-esque face, she is rarely given the opportunity to inhabit the possible complexities of a scene. We are plotting a recovery, but we are barely getting into it.

Although the narrative wants to explain the appeal of Orkney to us, the ancient appeal of the place is palpable. Loneliness does not have to mean loneliness: for a troubled soul, the weather and terrain can be like-minded companions of a deep and tempestuous spirit. When Rona chooses to further isolate herself on the tip of an extreme weather island called Papay, this film that at times feels like a solo voyage sister to “Nomadland” enters its final stretch with a stronger fusion of its restless style. Ultimately, the vibe of “The Outrun” is closer to a meandering travelogue than the more complicated healing drama we expected.