German filmmaker Nora Fingscheidt’s “The Outrun,” starring Saoirse Ronan, is an addiction and rehab drama. It’s more or less worth seeing for Ronan’s great performance, otherwise much of the story felt very cliched to me. Here’s the trailer.
No U.S. distributor had stepped in to pick this one up, and I can understand why — it doesn’t really have any serious awards prospects and the reviews have been good, not great. This is the kind of film that needs critics, and I don’t believe they’ll be fully onboard this one to make an Oscar nomination happen.
Somehow, Sony Pictures Classics believes they have an Oscar contending performance here, they’ve just picked up “The Outrun” and set it up with an October 4 release. I imagine it will now be screening at TIFF in September. I can’t really see Telluride including this one in their lineup.
“The Outrun” is based on Amy Liptrot’s memoir tackling her bouts with alcoholism, addiction, and recovery. Ronan plays Rona, a version of Liptrot, in the film, a Scottish woman who returns to her Islands-set home after a decade away, now sober but lonely. The film uses flashbacks to get inside Rona’s head as she attempts to suppress past memories.