‘The Outrun’ profiles a talented, but alcoholic young woman 

The life of an alcoholic is horrific. The lives of those who love them are equally bleak. What are the choices? Co-dependent, enabler, or tough love? And, given the many previous stark and sometimes sensationalized films profiling alcoholics, how can a new work dramatize this illness with an instructive, innovative insight?

 The good news is that German director Nora Fingscheidt has found a way in “The Outrun,” adapted from Amy Liptrot’s 2016 memoir. The extraordinary, immersive performance of Saoirse Ronan as twenty-nine-year-old Rona and the intricate interweaving of crowded city and isolated country, mythic fables and animated folklore, past and present events lift this poignant look at alcoholism above the mundane. For it effectively includes the full gamut of emotions and excuses, presenting the failures and resolutions so familiar to alcoholic men and women, whatever their age, class or ethnicity. The inventive chronology never confuses Rona’s varying locations and degrees of sobriety (or lack thereof) because of Rona’s distinctive hair color and the contrasting environments.

 In the London’s parties and bars, the temptation to indulge poses irresistible enticements for Rona, riding the roller coaster of alcoholic addiction through unleashed extravagance, painful hangovers, and accidents both physically and emotionally destructive. Rona has an attentive boyfriend, but soon he can’t tolerate her behavior and denial, her attacks on him, or her assertion that “I can’t be happy sober.” Rona’s escape into liquor is confounded by her father’s bipolar disorder and her mother’s leaving their family because of it.

Hitting rock bottom, or as close to it as she can get and still survive, Rona heads back to her home in the Orkney Islands, an archipelago north/northeast of Scotland. Still struggling there, in a symbolic retreat to the isolation essential to repair herself once and for all, Rona moves farther north to Papa Westray. Making the important point that intelligence is not a determining factor, Rona has an advanced degree in biology earned in her London studies, an area of interest that sustains her. But alcohol rules.

Her solitary battle, essential for her recovery, is staged amidst harsh and healing nature—the seals she loves, pounding surf, gale force winds. The metaphors embedded in the wildness of nature mirror Rona’s explosiveness.

She will at long last learn of sobriety, “It never gets easy. It just gets less hard.” Perhaps, as the title suggests, she can outrun her illness. The flights of fancy and Rona’s insightful voiceover musings guide viewers through an immersive, mesmerizing experience. “The Outrun” is in English and showing at several cinemas. Check listings.