Saoirse Ronan is the first Oscar contender of the year

Johnny Oleksynski

movies

Sundance Film Festival

by Johnny Oleksynski

The year’s first potential Oscar contender — well, for 2025 — is Saoirse Ronan as a troubled alcoholic who takes refuge in nature in “The Outrun.”

The actress is gutsy and raw, and doesn’t overplay for a second like so many accolades-hungry actors in addictive films.

Director Nora Fingscheidt’s hard-hitting drama, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, is based on Amy Liptrot’s 2016 memoir of the same name and provides a compelling part for Ronan, who plays his best character at the crossroads.

This is Rona from London, who grew up on the remote Orkney Islands off the coast of Scotland and drinks to soothe the open wounds of her past.

She’s a bad drunk – the kind who downs everyone’s leftovers at last call and then kicks and screams when she’s angrily told to leave.

Rona usually puts herself in dangerous situations and never remembers what she did or said the night before.

Fingscheidt tells the woman’s story in a messy, nonlinear way that mimics a claustrophobically boozy blackout. Dates and details are vague: when she goes to rehab, what time she relapses, the day she goes back to her parents’ stunning if sparsely populated town.

Through the sea, however, Rona – and the film – begins to find clarity.

For him, home is where the cure is, but it’s also the root of his problems. Rona’s father, Andrew (Stephen Dillane), has bipolar disorder, so she grew up with an unpredictable and often absent father. His mom, Anne (Saskia Reeves), has left him to run her farm alone while Pop lives elsewhere on the property.

Back in rocky Orkney, Rona is at once calm and restless. For city dwellers, wide open landscapes offer a different kind of claustrophobia. She also misses her ex-boyfriend, Danin (Papa Esidu), who is fed up with her drunken behavior and empty apologies.

But Nora is determined to get better with the help of a tougher island, rare birds, accepting locals and self-confidence.

I’ll admit to having addictive-movie fatigue. Movies about substance abuse have been made for decades, of course, but lately, there’s been an overabundance of them, especially about the opioid epidemic. There was “Ben Is Back” with Julia Roberts and “Beautiful Boy” starring Timothée Chalamet. A few years ago at Sundance I saw the premiere of the terrifying “Four Good Days” starring Mila Kunis and Glenn Close. Many of them have TV. Formula made for supported.

To its credit, “The Outrun” takes a different path, choosing instead to sway us with imaginations — sometimes haunting, sometimes breathless — rather than weepy speeches. In retrospect, it’s a very quiet and lonely film.

It’s an extraordinary performance for Ronan, who dares to be inaccessible for a rare time in his career. From “Lady Bird” and “Little Woman” her natural charm and swagger that we’re used to is a twinkle in Rona’s eye—and it’s a little light on why the audience is rooting for this troubled woman just as hard as she does.

Ronan’s performance will surely be the talk of the town in the coming months.