Ammonite was set on a rugged coastline in southern England in the 19th century. Director Francis Lee twists a fictional love story around the real figure of the fossil collector Mary Anning.
Los Angeles – The title of the costume drama “Ammonite” alludes to the great passion of the fossil collector Mary Anning.
The paleontologist lived in southern England in the coastal town of Lyme Regis in the first half of the 19th century. As a child, she discovered fossils along the rugged cliffs, from ammonites (an extinct animal species that lived in the sea) millions of years old to rare dinosaur skeletons.
Oscar winner Kate Winslet (46, “The Reader) plays the withdrawn, careworn woman who did not get the recognition she deserved for her fossil discoveries in the male-dominated world of science during her lifetime.
With her passion for collecting, Anning earned a meager living for herself and her ailing mother (Gemma Jones). She prepared the finds and sold them to tourists, colleagues and museums. It was not until decades later that her meticulous work was recognized as a contribution to the evidence of the extinction of animal species.
A fictional love story
This story alone of the misunderstood scientist in Victorian England would be an exciting portrait. But the British director Francis Lee twists the historical figure in a fictional romance that picks up on another taboo of the time – Anning had secret affairs with women.
In the frosty, tied-up world, in which Anning has to laboriously climb over sand, scree and rocks in long skirts, feelings are only expressed with minimal gestures. This is also the case in the beginning when the shy wife of the wealthy London geologist Roderick Murchison enters Anning’s life. The couple was acquainted with the fossil collector in real life.
In “Ammonite”, Murchison leaves his “melancholy” wife behind to relax in the coastal town when he goes on a research trip. He asks Anning, for a fee, to look after the fragile Charlotte. This is initially a burden for the silent collector, but then the brittle coolness between the unequal women turns into passion.
Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan as lovers
Winslet and Saoirse Ronan (27, “Lady Bird”, “Little Women”) are together in front of the camera for the first time, but they look completely familiar in the intimate love scenes. “Saoirse and I choreographed the scene ourselves,” said Winslet to the industry journal “Hollywood Reporter” in 2020 before the world premiere of the film at the Toronto Film Festival. They would both have felt very safe. “I’ve never been so proud of a love scene as when I was shooting ‘Ammonite’,” emphasized the Oscar winner. She wasn’t embarrassed at all.
Director Lee had already demonstrated a sure instinct and sensitivity in 2017 in his multi-award-winning directorial debut “God’s Own Country”. A young farmer in the north of England suddenly falls in love with a seasonal worker from Romania. There are not many words in this gay love story either, in “Ammonite” Lee goes one step further. The loneliness of the characters in their rugged environment is constantly palpable, even when they are seized with passion and desire. Little is spoken, small gestures and looks are enough.
“Ammonite” is gently accompanied by the piano compositions of the German musician Volker Bertelmann, known under the artist name Hauschka. Together with his US colleague Dustin O’Halloran, he wrote the music for the love drama. In 2017 Bertelmann and O’Halloran were in the Oscar race for the soundtrack to the film “Lion”.
Ammonite, Great Britain 2020, 118 min., FSK from 12, by Francis Lee, with Kate Winslet, Saoirse Ronan, Gemma Jones dpa
