Ammonite (2020)- BFI London Film Festival 2020

Review

120min

Genre:       Drama, Fact-Based, Romance

Director:     Francis Lee

Cast:         Kate Winslet, Saoirse Ronan, Gemma Jones…and more

Writers:     Francis Lee

-Synopsis-

On the Southern windswept coast of 19^th century England, the solitary life of a withdrawn fossil hunter and academic is upended by the arrival of a young and melancholy gentleman’s wife who becomes her lodger, apprentice, and something more, as their relationship slowly  blossoms amid shared grief and loss to provide the human connection they craved—in this fictional forbidden romance based on real people from the writer/director of ‘God’s Own Country’.

After igniting his career with very personal shorts and a debut feature about gay relationships and people who work the land, Francis Lee turns to people who scour and study it, turning back the clock and focusing on real historical figures who helped change the understanding of the Earth’s natural history but got little recognition for it. All to tell a tender and restrained, female-led hypothetical love story and tale of human connection through trauma and detachment.

Kate Winslet stars as Lyme Regis fossil finder and trader Mary Anning, living a socially withdrawn life on the Dorset coast with her elderly mother Molly Anning (Gemma Jones) trawling the beaches and cliffs for natural artefacts to sell to visiting tourists or send to London museums, while furthering her own research. But her emotionally detached existence takes a turn when gentleman geologist Roderick Murchison (James McArdle) brings his young wife Charlotte (Saoirse Ronan) to coalesce in the seaside town after a difficult time, as she steadily develops a relationship with Mary which shift from lodger to paleontological assistant to friendship, and blossoms into an uncertain romance which violates the social conventions of the time but forges the affection they so needed.

Named after the fossil type of which she found so many, ‘Ammonite’ dramatizes the later part of the short life of Dorsetian Anning, in Lyme Regis where it actually took place no less, bringing to public attention this working-class, formally uneducated, and self-taught overlooked figure who greatly contributed to our understanding of the natural world and its history. It also chronicles part of her real-life friendship with Charlotte Murchison—a geologist whom the film re-frames as a much younger melancholy wife to a fancy big city scientist—as Francis Lee inserts a fictional and hypothetical romance between them borne out of mutual grief and loneliness, which forges some much-needed human connection.

Like any respectable British period romance and costume drama, ‘Ammonite’ is dressed to impress in beautifully re-created mid-19^th century costumes, albeit more modest, functional and worn fashions than you would get in a high society setting, and with the production designs to match—all seamlessly resurrecting coastal Devon and to a lesser extent industrial London of the mid-1840s on a modest budget. And if the striking subdued cinematography by Stéphane Fontaine (A Prophet, Captain Fantastic) helps to set the scene, the score from Volker Bertelmann and Dustin O’Halloran (Lion, The Old Guard) certainly sets the mood, a wistful and melancholy classical score which perfectly captures the soul of the story and its two main characters.

As a restrained, contemplative character piece though, the film will inevitably live or die by the screenwriting strength of the narrative and by the cast chosen to bring its characters to life, and on the later front Lee can rely on two generations of Anglo-Irish talent which would be the envy of any director looking for a leading lady duo, with arguably the finest actor of this generation Saoirse Ronan delivering a solid melancholy but burning turn as the romantic catalyst of the piece. But it’s Winslet as Anning who really carries the film on the back of a blunt, socially unrefined and emotionally withdrawn figure, bitten by tragedy and burned by love. A still, stoic, and restrained performance which betrays something boiling underneath.

Yet despite the film’s sex and nudity—including a steamy scene which shows us Saoirse Ronan as we’ve never seen her before but is par for the course for Kate Winslet—there is a distinct lack of convincing passion and infatuation in the relationship which they slowly build, both in terms of the romance and friendship, and it feels a tad prudish for a modern LGBTQ+ film, even taking account the stiff-upper-lip reserved British period setting. And that’s in spite of the best efforts of two sterling actors with some screen chemistry. Ultimately and crucially though, it’s in the screenwriting and the character choices where ‘Ammonite’ really stumbles, not to mention the pacing and flow of the story, and it just feels like Francis Lee got stuck too innocuously between the restraint of a historical period drama and the daring of a modern LGBT love story.

It’s an even bigger shortcoming given that Lee takes plenty of artistic licence and engages in some historical revisionism—although no more than Hollywood does on a regular basis—all to sell this gay period romance with contemporary resonance, but ultimately just fails to really hit the emotional mark or push boundaries . . . let alone stoke any fires in the soul. And despite its contemplative commentary on the British class system, genre norms and social expectations, it’s not a particularly enlightening historical piece either.

What it does do however is use historically grounded colours to paint a fictional picture of someone about whom we should all know more, and puts Lyme Regis on the global map—all while telling a tender, melancholy and painfully still tale of loss and human connection, and a love story which may not quite stir the soul but is still beautiful to behold.

The Bottom Line…

A still, wistful, and tender 19^th century fictional romantic portrait of an extraordinary real British paleontological figure, ‘Ammonite’ never really pushes the envelope nor manages to truly stir the soul when it comes to a passionate LGBT romance. But Francis Lee leans on two sterling central performances and just about manages to sow the connective tissue of loss and grief into a restrained and elegantly realised tale of human connection.

‘Ammonite’ is out on the 13th of November in the US, with no UK date yet.

Comments

comments

Comments are closed.