Saoirse Ronan explores the ‘ugliness’ of addiction with Sundance film ‘The Outrun’

“The Outrun,” a memoir about recovery, 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 lockdown, she had no doubt she wanted to help turn it into a film.

The resulting film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on Friday, in which Ronan plays Amy Liptrot, a music journalist who returns home from her doomed life in London to heal the wild beauty of Scotland’s Orkney Islands.

“It’s a subject that I’ve always wanted to understand at some point, I’ve had my own experience, as we all have,” Ronan told AFP.

“I knew that as an actor, there would be so much that you get to play — so many colors, so many highs and lows.”

In the film, Liptrot unexpectedly encounters the stunning wildlife, rugged landscapes, and crashing waves of his home islands—moments that cross-cut with memories of his fractured relationships with his partner, friends, and family.

“I had to bring a lot of ugliness to this guy,” said Ronan, who is also a producer on the film.

“When she’s at her worst, it means so much to the people she’s closest to, and I’ve never really had the opportunity to do that.”

“I don’t necessarily think I would have been ready to take on such a role even two or three years ago.”

Early reviews were full of praise, with IndieWire calling it both a “tremendous piece of landscape art” and a “rigorous character study”.

– ‘Love me!’ –

The film was among a packed schedule on the second day of Sundance, the influential indie film festival co-founded by Robert Redford, which takes place each winter in the mountains of Utah.

The show also featured the surreal sci-fi “Love Me,” starring Kristen Stewart and Steven Yeun as an AI-powered boy and an orbiting satellite who strike up a romance after humanity wipes itself from Earth.

Certainly the most original entry at this year’s fest, “Love Me” asks whether artificial intelligence can feel loneliness, or even love — and what it might think of humans, long after we’ve left the planet.

Apparently the only two sentient devices in existence, Boy and Satellite try to overcome their isolation by chatting across thousands of miles and millions of years, forming an unlikely bond.

Building their personas from scratch, they scour the Internet for information about departed human civilizations, mimicking the often clumsy and absurd human behavior they find on influencers’ social media accounts.

“For us, it’s not really a movie about AI. But it’s a movie about us, seen through the lens of AI,” co-director Andy Zucchero said at the movie’s world premiere in Utah on Friday.

“The Fate of Humanity Trying to Unpack Circa 2024.”

Stewart and Yun initially provide the voices for Boy and Satellite, but gradually appear on screen in various visual forms as the AI ​​machines create a strange metaverse of their own.

“It’s about a world we’re not here in anymore,” Stewart said on the red carpet.

Performative Internet videos provide the only surviving impression of humanity, “The echoes we’ve left behind are mainly ‘Love me!’ There’s screaming,” said the former “Twilight” star.

Stewart will premiere another film at Sundance on Saturday. “Love Lies Bleeding” depicts a violent and criminal affair between a gym manager and a bisexual bodybuilder.

Sundance, the main launching pad for the year’s most anticipated independent films and documentaries, runs through January 28.

AFP