AMMONITE

Directing: B+
Acting: A-
Writing: A-
Cinematography: B
Editing: B+

I wonder if there’s a more overtly lesbian-themed title that could have been given to Ammonite. The term refers to a group of extinct molluscs closely related to today’s octopi, squids and cuttlefish. So, maybe . . . Cuttlepussy? Okay, I admit that’s a little much. That sounds a little like a James Bond movie, and this is about as far from that as it gets. Except of course that it’s a British film.

Ammonite is much more romantic, and thus befitting this memorable love story written and directed by Francis Lee, who also wrote and directed the wonderful gay farm worker love story God’s Own Country in 2017. Evidently after gaining such critical acclaim for the earlier film, Lee wanted to give the ladies a crack at a same-sex love story. This time around features much more famous movie stars: Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan. They are also two consummate performers, and they ground the story, which ultimately becomes very erotic, with palpable chemistry.

Ammonite is mostly Winslet’s movie, however. This is Mary Anning’s story, which Ronan’s Charlotte Merchison moves in and out of. Mary is older, well established in her life as an paleontologist who, in nineteenth century England, made seminal discoveries ultimately credited to men. She lives in the south coast of England in a place called Lyme, barely scraping by selling cleaned-up fossils from the nearby beach to tourists and occasionally much larger discoveries to scientists who take her work back to London. It’s when a man interested in learning from her arrives with Charlotte, his wife, that the two women meet. Charlotte falls ill and then Mary finds herself nursing her in recovery.

Francis Lee makes a lot of curious decisions here, as both Mary Anning and Charlotte Murchison were both real, historical figures, known to be friends but with no evidence of them having been lovers. Also, the real Murchison was eleven years older than Anning, whereas Kate Winslet is 19 years older than Saoirse Ronan. It seems to me this story would have been just as effective, and perhaps even more so, had these characters been fully fictionalized but in the same era and respective circumstances. Why use real women from history and then apply such radical fictionalizations of their actual lives?

All that aside, Ammonite is well worth watching. You might call it this year’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire, albeit not quite as close to a masterful work of art. Ammonite is much grittier, about a single working class woman who never married and lives with her mother (Gemma Jones), and gets a visit from a much younger and more well-to do woman. Mary spends a lot of time getting very dirty on wet beaches, and Winslet plays her with the gruffness of a hermit with few social skills. The opening scenes are devoid of dialogue, following her around as she rolls up her sleeves and dives into her work. Once people start talking, Mary immediately proves to be an unusually direct woman indeed. Particularly for the 1840s, this is rather fun to watch.

Even once Charlotte arrives, she is even quieter than Mary for quite some time, as at first she feels abandoned there, prescribed rest by a doctor while her husband must travel abroad. This allows the relationship between the two women to develop at a gradual but fully organic pace, romance not sparking until about halfway through the movie. Then, Ammonite features at least two sex scenes between them that are fairly graphic. Knowing neither of these actors are actually lesbians, I do find myself curious as to how lesbian viewers might take in those sex scenes. Do they seem authentic? I’ve never had lesbian sex so I couldn’t say for sure. At least there’s no “scissoring.” And to Ammonite’s credit, even though it has a male director, its sex scenes were reportedly choreographed by the stars themselves, and shot with an all-female crew in the room.

The sex scenes are indeed pretty steamy, and the one place in the film where the slightly shaky, hand-held cinematography works best. Its unconventionally ambiguous ending, which takes us to places we don’t expect—both figuratively and literally—sticks with you. Ammonite has a certain lack of polish, but it stands firm on the strength of its writing and particularly its performances. This is a period piece with production design that feels lived-in rather than overdressed, a uniquely transporting romantic love story in spite of what’s easy to nitpick..

Let’s see what latent homosexual tendencies we can dig up.

Overall: B+