Oscar-winner Kate Winslet and four-time Academy Award nominee Saoirse Ronan star in this forbidden romance drama from award-winning writer-director Francis Lee (God's Own Country), set in 1840s England.
Mary Anning (Winslet), a veteran palaeontologist, and Charlotte (Ronan), a young woman sent by her husband to convalesce by the sea, develop an intense relationship. Despite the chasm between their social spheres and personalities, Mary and Charlotte discover they can each offer what the other has been searching for: the realisation that they are not alone. It is the beginning of a passionate and all-consuming love affair that will defy all social bounds and alter the course of both lives irrevocably.
The attraction between the women, though, never quite sells. There’s an alluring stillness to Winslet’s Mary where Ronan’s Charlotte wavers, frail and unmoored, and it makes sense that the union of these two presences would seduce. Yet in comparison to other recent sapphic period dramas such as Portrait of a Lady on Fire and The Favourite, there is a distinct lack of spark between Ammonite’s leads.
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Even in their most intimate scene, Mary and Charlotte and their love remain at a remove.
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Ultimately more symbolic than satisfying, the project leaves one grateful that two stars of this caliber would take on such a story, while wishing their efforts had left us with a more resonant artifact.
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It is a love story that is also a fascinating artefact: quixotic, romantic, erotic.
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From the beginning of Ammonite, writer/director Francis Lee trusts his lead performer to convey an incredible amount without dialogue. And that trust pays off in one of the best performances of Kate Winslet’s career.
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This is the work of a mature filmmaker in full command of his voice, yielding remarkable performances, chief among them a complex character study of stoicism and desire from Kate Winslet that might be the best work of her career.
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There's an austerity to the film — long shots of stone and candlelight, clipped dialogue — that can feel rigorous, almost grim. But Lee (God's Own Country) is only building a richer kind of mood, and priming the canvas for his actresses, who reward that faith with remarkable performances.
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One of Lee’s brilliant choices is to refuse to put a soppy romantic gloss on the affair. He suggests instead that passion can blind lovers to a true understanding of each other as easily as it can open their eyes.
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