Less than box-fresh from last year’s London Film Festival, Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan star in Ammonite, a visually austere drama about a lesbian palaeontologist that follows in the footsteps of Todd Haynes’s Carol by offering a spare, reflective love story illuminated by detailed sex scenes. Winslet may be giving interviews wondering why everyone is asking her about these scenes, but it’s probably an easier handle for audiences to get hold of than a study of a repressed palaeontoloist at the sea-side.
The sex of the director, Francis Lee, male, probably hobbled Ammonite as an ‘crusading–for-women’ awards darling, which is the kind of publicity this rather remote picture needs. Winslet plays Mary Anning, a real-life figure from the world of palaeontology circa the first half of the 1800’s. Anning moons around the Lyme Regis area, familiar from Karel Reisz’s The French Lieutenant’s Woman, digging up various bits and bobs from the beach and selling them to keep herself afloat. In a burst of speculative story-telling, ie making it up, Lee imagines Anning in a fictional relationship with married geologist Charlotte Murchison (Ronan), and given that lesbian relationships were frowned on even in such rural outposts at the time, they have to be furtive about their burning passion to stop the prying eyes and minds of their community.
Ammonite takes its name from the fossils uncovered and displayed here, and for the most part, Lee’s film feels somewhat fossilised too, with few dramatic incidents and little spark between the two women. It therefore feels like a hairpin switch for Lee to be so explicitly frank about the sex scenes, which feel somewhat pruriently lingered over. There’s nothing wrong or immoral in seeing sexual activity portrayed on screen, but it does feel jarring and decidedly modern in this period context when the relationship they’re illustrating seems so undefined. Ammonite does tap into the way that women were excluded from taking part or getting credit for scientific discoveries, but doesn’t make much rousing out of glass ceiling beats very similar to those featured in Radioactive or Colette.
Lee made his name with his festival circuit darling In God’s Country, but even in 2021’s weakened awards field, Ammonite has struck out after early prominence. The Aunt Edna’s who would be seduced by the pacing and atmosphere are likely to be turned off by the bursts of headstrong erotica, and potential thrill-seekers are likely to be turned off by the languid pace and lack of anything actually happening. Despite fierce bursts of sexual cavorting, Ammonite is an ultimately rather staid film that will preach only to a minority audience; an uninvolving alabaster expression of a non-existent relationship.
Having checked this morning, the FDA website is listing Ammonite as out on VOD in the UK on March 26th. And according to the official Instagram account for Lionsgate UK. #Ammonite is available for premium rental at home on all digital platforms from March 26.
Thanks to Lionsgate for screener acess to this film.
And the archaeological elements were fascinating, much more so than in The Dig.
I didn’t get much from The Dig in terms of salty detail other than you dig a big hole and try not to get buried in it.
A day at the beach in other words. I liked the detail of Ammonite.
Had never heard of Mary Anning and as noted above was disappointed by The Dig so came at this with reservations and only saw it on my weekly movie outing because there was nothing else on show that I had not already seen. I was surprised that I really enjoyed it. I liked the stately pacing – slow I agree – but there was something distinctly old-fashioned, almost European arthouse, about the way the movie played out with repression the order of the day and Anning passed over by the powers-that-be on account of her gender. Also, being one of the only two survivors in a family that saw saw another eight kids die in childbirth added some depth – the mother keeps an ornament for each dead child that she obsessively cleans. I found it completely engrossing.
This may work better in the cinema than on a cold January afternoon at home; I’d found it compellingly dull, but I guess the pull quote would be ‘compelling’. Winslet does make a real fist of this character, but the whole film felt like it was more substantial in retorspect for me. I found the slowness tiresome at the time, but might give it another shot at some point; the weight of expectations doesn’t help.
I have a sneaky feeling I’d have switched off pretty soon watching it on a telly but the big screen often has a hypnotic effect with slower films. I had only low expectations so that probably helped me.
I stuck with it on ye old tv, but felt I’d missed something.
Shows the power of cinema. I regularly switch off new Netflix pictures or others on the box that I would have happily sat through at the cinema. Granted some of the Netflix offerings are pretty thin but so too are often the movies on show at the cinema.
I’m reserving judgment on the film but won’t be in a rush to see it even though I was initially quite excited about it being a film about Mary Anning. Big fan of her work. 😉
Aha, I’d like to see a film about her, but from most accounts, this isn’t it.
I was expecting this to be a decent picture about fossil finding, having been disappointed by The Dig.
The Dig is a high spirited laugh riot compared to this….
I haven’t seen this yet but I’m looking forward to it. I am biased perhaps since Francis Lee is our local filmmaker, but I think God’s Own Country went beyond being a ‘festival favourite’ and was widely appreciated and not just in West Yorkshire. I’m also intrigued by your suggestion that sex scenes might look out of place in a period setting. You may well be right about the film overall, but I’ll reserve judgement until I see it.
Everyone is biased one way or another; I’m usually grumpy about government-financed films winning awards at government financed film-festivals, it’s hard to tell if there’s a genuine groundswell or not, and being feted like this usually works against a film for cynics like me. I’m sure people have always had sex, but the intense detail here feels very modern cinematically, whereas the rest of the film stands outside the action like a staid BBC version of a DH Lawrence novel. Look forward to your piece….
Nah. Got my historical lesbian erotica fix in Lizzie with Kristen Stewart and Chloe Sevigny.
It that a biopic of today’s popular singer Lizzo and her hit record Juice?
Close. But this is the one with an axe murder.
Yup, I saw that one, no axe murders here, but lots more flesh and fumbling…
Nope, lesbian dinosaurs not my kind of thing, though not because I’m an Aunt Edna, I have watched Outlander! The scenery looks nice in it though.
The scenery is nice, Dorset looks quaint, but you’d be better off with Steep and Irons against the same background in French Lieutenants Woman….
I quite liked that, what I remember of it anyway.
Ammonites are cool, this film sounded rather like a sought after gem for a director to polish an award over. Having just gotten through the Dig, it feels a little like a series.
I get that, but I’m fed up with seeing people scrabbling in the mud (Nomadland too). When the audience are busy scrabbling in the mud, we want to see movie stars do something more exciting….