The Outrun stars Saoirse Ronan in a poetic Scottish recovery drama | Entertainment

In the recently released indie comedy “My Old Ass,” the heroine has a little brother who has a crush on pop culture actress Saoirse Ronan, so much so that his bedroom walls are covered with her photos, in a way usually reserved for boy bands . I think most of us know how he feels. Ronan has owned the screen and the hearts of many moviegoers since her Oscar-nominated breakthrough as the pitiful teenage villain in “Atonement” (2007), and her roles since then – little women and ladybugs, Irish immigrants in Brooklyn – have not had the arrival of a diva , but of a thoughtful and versatile creative artist who grew up in the public eye.

So it comes as a bit of a shock when I realize that Ronan is now 30 and in The Outrun he plays a woman who has lost her youth to the bottle and wakes up to realize she’s on the other side. “The Outrun” is based on Scottish author Amy Liptrot’s 2016 memoir and was co-written by Liptrot with Daisy Lewis and the film’s director, German filmmaker Nora Fingscheidt. It is also reinforced by the film’s setting in the barren Orkney Islands of northern Scotland and by Fingscheidt’s poetic approach to time, place and chronology.

The narrative is fragmented into fragments that gradually come together to form a picture: Rona (Ronan) as a doctoral student in London who lets the academic world be overwhelmed by parties and raves until her friends turn away and her boyfriend (a sensitive Paapa Essiedu ) finally the towel steps in; Rona at her mother’s house in the Orkneys, 12-step, trying to stay sober and failing; Rona out on the remote island of Papay, as far as she can avoid temptation, surrounded by birds, rocks, seals and the sea.

Occasionally the screen becomes a PowerPoint presentation as Rona and the film lecture us about wave behavior, or the mythical seal creatures known as selkies, or the disappearing corncrake (it’s a bird), only 30% of which make their annual migration conclude – such as the There is a danger that an alcoholic will make it back to the shores of sobriety, it is implied. (These passages are probably taken verbatim from the book.)

Otherwise, Ronan is the focus of every scene and almost every shot in this arguably overlong film, and while the actress’s spark keeps the gloom at bay, it’s a full-time job. Recovery is inevitably undramatic, a daily grind that, as one of Rona’s fellow travelers put it, “never gets easy.” It just becomes less difficult.” There are pauses in the narrative of “The Outrun” – the title refers to the land surrounding a farmhouse, but also to Rona’s rapid escape from herself – but the film’s seriousness counts for a lot , and the star’s unvarnished performance counts even more.

In the flashback scenes, Rona is a terror – a disorderly drunk who hides bottles behind sinks, gaslights her boyfriend, causes public scenes, and drunkenly lets a stranger take her to the emergency room as the victim of an assault. “The Outrun” sets this up as the storm from which the rest of the film seeks refuge, and Ronan has the sullen, wild-eyed intensity of a woman who refuses to see the cliff she’s about to drive off. It’s not a flashy performance, as such things can be. Rather, Ronan shows us the stone in Rona’s personality, the selfishness and above all the panic.

In contrast, the Orkney scenes scrape to the core of the film’s physical and emotional landscapes. Yunus Roy Imer’s camerawork cools the colors to a boundless blue, capturing Rona’s tiny figure against epic backdrops of surf and shoreline. Stephan Bechinger’s editing brings the time periods together into a graceful, if sometimes confusing, whole.

It’s also good for a longtime moviegoer’s heart to see older cast members like Saskia Reeves as Rona’s mother, filled with a religious faith her daughter cannot share, and Stephen Dillane as Rona’s bipolar father, alternately howling into the wind like a cheap Lear or unshakably depressed in bed. The heroine believes that these emotional fluctuations have been passed down, and part of the cycle of growth in “The Outrun” is Rona realizing that her addiction is hers alone.

The rest is learning to see, hear and rejoin the world of which she is a part, with all its glories and storms. There are long sequences in which Rona runs along the rocky shores of mainland Orkney and Papay with headphones clamped over her ears, while the soundtrack is filled with the clattering electronic dance music of her time in London. “The Outrun” is the story of how she finds the courage to pick up the phones and listen—really listen—to the waves, the corncrakes, and herself.

Ty Burr is the author of the film recommendation newsletter “Ty Burr’s Watch List” at tyburrswatchlist.com.