The Outrun (2024)

Beautiful, in my opinion realistic insight into the life of an (ex)alcoholic who manages to get her life back on track after several (hard) falls and gets up again.

Beautiful cinematography, beautiful images of a rugged Scottish island, more than excellent acting, the chronological jumps keep you involved, here and there a bit too drawn out and the introduced mysticism perhaps a bit artificial I thought, but the film can handle it well.

Translated from Dutch · View original

The film is about a young woman who drinks too much (it is not clear why: there is the suggestion that it is hereditary because her father is insane) and that is annoying for her because it results in embarrassing moments and her boyfriend walks out on her. The film feels like a very long Postbus 51 commercial 'Drank maakt meer verkeerde dan je lief' (Alcohol destroys more than you love). But the film still has a happy ending because on an island without alcohol she kicks the habit and becomes happy again. I couldn't do much with it. The main character speaks vague poetic-mystical texts such as that we come from the ocean, that the body is a continent and that drowned people become seals that come ashore at night. I couldn't do much with that either and I don't know what this 'we are one with the Earth' mysticism has to do with the alcohol drama. I suspect that the book is clearer.

Translated from Dutch · View original

"...it's like you're making clay out of a pot, and then every time the pieces fall off, and you're halfway through a new attempt," writes Graaf Machine. An (unintentionally) beautiful metaphor for the slow and long process of withdrawal, which often goes in fits and starts, exactly the way this wonderful film is constructed: fragmentary, hardly a storyline, with parallels between the loud music that accompanies Rona's life in London and the fierce wind on the Orkney Islands that she eventually manages to tame like a conductor.

And what an actress, Saoirse Ronan, who convincingly draws on the broadest palette of emotions in this film.

Translated from Dutch · View original