MOVIE REVIEW
“AMMONITE”
Rated R. At Landmark Kendall Square, Majestic Watertown and suburban theaters.
Grade: A-
Overlooking a clumsy opening and the fact that writer-director Francis Lee (“God’s Own Country”) has invented a lesbian romance between two historical figures not known for certain to be gay, the forbidden period romance “Ammonite” is a powerful portrait of two women on fire. The real-life, self-taught paleontologist Mary Anning of Kate Winslet is as unlikely to speak as the fossils she has become famous for finding on the windswept beaches of Lyme Regis in Dorset in the first half of the 19th century. In opening scenes, Anning is a lone figure on a beach in coat, boots, bonnet and a voluminous dress that sweeps the sand and stones as she ambles. The waves roar.
Anning and her unwell mother, Molly (Gemma Jones), live together behind their seaside shop in which Anning sells “curios” that are in fact fossil specimens of prehistoric sea creatures she finds on her daily expeditions to the beach, where the cliffs and the water give up their long dead inhabitants. Anning is unmarried, without children and well-known among male-dominated scientific circles for her specimens and drawings. One of her finds, a complete ichthyosaur, is in the British Museum.
One day her gloomy shop is invaded by a well-to-do man and his wife. They are the real life Roderick Murchison (James McArdle), a Scottish geologist, and his young wife Charlotte (Saoirse Ronan). Murchison lays the flattery on rather thickly, praising “the presiding deity of Lyme.” Anning’s cold shoulder should freeze him in his tracks. He pays her to take him and his wife, who is ailing from what might be a recent miscarriage, on a salutary, specimen-seeking hike on the rocky strand. Murchison, who treats Charlotte rudely, then asks Anning to be his wife’s companion while he continues on a four-, five- or perhaps six-week sojourn.
Winslet demonstrates how this dreary Anning animal peeks out of her shell with a rare, delightful and probably awards-worthy mixture of delicacy, charm and fear. Ronan is equally mesmerizing as the young, curious woman, who finds solace in the arms of this strange, wonderful creature. We learn that Anning had a relationship with a woman from the town named Elizabeth Philpot (Fiona Shaw of “Kindred”). Things ended badly and the two hardly speak, although it is clear that Elizabeth wants Anning’s friendship.
“Ammonite” is Lee’s second feature, and he refreshingly does not feel obliged to explain everything to us. We do not need to be told that the Geological Society did not admit women to its membership or that a woman to be an acknowledged expert in Anning’s field was rare or that life for Anning and her mother, two women on their own struggling to put food on the table, was very hard.
“Ammonite,” which is named after a spiral-shaped fossil, bears a resemblance to Celine Schiamma’s acclaimed 2019 effort “Portrait of a Lady on Fire.” Lee’s film is surprisingly funny (Anning even recites a raunchy limerick), and its rampant sex sequence is bound to elicit comparison to France’s “Blue Is the Warmest Color.” As the tall and handsome doctor that the besotted women ignore, Alec Secareanu is amusingly bewildered.
Shooting on location in Lyme Regis, Lee captures the tumult of waves pounding on a rock-strewn beach and shows us how the howling winds churn sea foam into mist. It’s elemental magic. Viewers will feel like they have truly stepped into geology’s “deep time” and found a love as hungry and primordial as the creatures Anning releases from their rocky tombs.
(“Ammonite” contains graphic simulated sex, nudity, lewd language and profanity.)
"love" - Google News
November 13, 2020 at 05:54PM
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Superb ‘Ammonite’ unearths tale of love & fossils - Boston Herald
"love" - Google News
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