The Outrun (2024)
Saoirse Ronan is sensational in this indie movie excellence.
After the highs of 'Brooklyn' and ‘Lady Bird', Saoirse Ronan is not only on a run but in her career best performance. Her denial, anger, confusion and effort to survive herself, as an alcoholic character, is tangible.
Hair colour changes help separate her pathetic and ostracising past from the person she's trying to be, not some noble future goal but a present she can live with.
She, its score, and epic end are an advert for the chilly, wind-swept and treeless Orkney Islands of Scotland.
Conversely, the sombreness of reality will prevent the movie reaching a mass audience always wanting sex, blood and laughter.
The director is Germany's Nora Fingscheidt, previously responsible for the intense child drama, 'System Crasher' (2019).