Review originally posted on November 12th, 2020
In 1840s England, acclaimed fossil hunter Mary Anning (Kate Winslet) meets Charlotte (Saoirse Ronan) a young woman suffering from Melancholia (oldspeak for depression) and sent by her husband to convalesce by the sea alongside the famous palaeontologist. The friendship is frosty at first, we soon come to realize it’s not just Charlotte who is depressed, but her new strolling buddy as well — a loner with no interest in conversing with the people around her, including her mother (Gemma Jones) who happens to work with her at the fossil shop she manages. Charlotte soon develops a high fever, Mary starts to care for her bed-stricken roomate, and as Charlotte’s spirits improve, so do Mary’s, to the point where lust comes into the equation.
Directed by Francis Lee, “Ammonite” is essentially about how the two women bond, and how that bond intensifies in slowburn fashion. To Lee, it’s all about the feel and sense of their longing, delivered in largely sterile fashion, not to mention lacking any of the passion thata ignited LGBTQ classics such as “Call Me By Your Name,” and “Potrait of A Lady on Fire”. Lee’s film has pace and characterization that can feel damn-near comatose, but It's not that “Ammonite” needs more erotica, it has plenty of that, it's more about the dialogue and mise-en-scene being sparingly bland to the point of frugality.
Why do Mary and Charlotte bond? At times their affinity is hard to fathom — there seems to be a lack of chemistry and realism needed to show how these two dames can fall in love with each other. Lee’s screenplay lacks the depth needed to make us care for them, it leaves us assuming way too much and, in the process, feeling incredibly distancing.It doesn’t help that Winslet and Ronan, commendable actresses in their own right, deliver Ammonite’s yearn-filled romance in emotionally strenuous ways.
The photography, courtesy of Stéphane Fontaine, plays with the coldness of the film's setting, not to mention Lee’s direction, via dark shadows and foggy ocean vistas. Lee, filmmaker of the equally impenetrable “God’s Own Country,” loves the bleak and dour, not to mention an overreliance on static tableaus grossly mixed in with his total misunderstanding of these characters. Whatever the truth of Anning and Murchison’s time was during those scant few weeks in 1841, becoming lifelong friends and correspondents in the process, “Ammonite” chooses instead to do close to nothing, leaving us isolated and yawning at the discovery of its frigidness. [C-]
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