![]() ![]() But in almost all these cases, many of the queer roles are played by non-queer actors- The Boys in the Band is the only one to have an entirely openly-gay cast playing all the gay roles. While collectively these movies are only a small swell in a enormous sea of cis, straight cinema, their numbers reflect an increasing interest in and market for LGBTQ2S+ stories. “British filmmaker Francis Lee’s fictionalized account of Mary and Charlotte’s actual lives defies most queer film clichés.” ![]() It’s an arthouse film about emotional isolation and female agency that also happens to feature two prestige heterosexual actresses (both best known for the sort of tasteful Oscar-winning period dramas that you can watch with your grandmother) ravenously going down on one another. Ammonite, however, isn’t simply a petticoated, sapphic meet-cute. ![]() Eventually the two fall in love.Īs with with his arresting debut God’s Own Country, British filmmaker Francis Lee’s fictionalized account of Mary and Charlotte’s actual lives defies most queer film clichés: Their struggles never tilt into full scale tragedy, there is no tormented coming out arc and, best of all, no one dies. Joke’s on him: The two women’s initial hostility to this arrangement gives way to long, smoldering looks across the rocky, windswept shoreline. Where Ronan’s character self-sabotagingly throws herself into the hostile-looking waves at her lowest ebb post-abandonment by her husband, after her rejuvenation thanks to the care and love of Anning, they both share a bathe in calmer waters later on – the swim like a baptism to signify their regeneration.One man even has the nerve to dump his young, depressed wife Charlotte (Saoirse Ronan) onto Mary for safekeeping so he can tour Europe unencumbered. And, just as the fossils play as an extended metaphor throughout the film, so does the sea. The picturesque landscape of the ‘Pearl of Dorset’, Lyme Regis, is utilised for both its quintessential muted British seaside palette, but, just as the oppression lifts from Winslet and Ronan’s characters early gloom, so the canvas around them changes. There’s no conceit here of a lustrous actor transforming themselves into an unglamorous and plain individual, Winslet plays the part absolutely straight, like one of the fossils she has just excavated: hard and drab on the exterior, but with hidden depths and treasures underneath (incidentally, Lee does continually play with these conceptual metaphors throughout the film).Īs with God’s Own Country, it’s a sensorial tour de force by Lee. Being able this time to call on a starrier cast, Lee isn’t let down by Saoirse Ronan, and, especially, Kate Winslet, in the lead role of renowned, reclusive palaentologist, Mary Anning. It’s a similar narrative concept to his exceptional debut, God’s Own Country, (both films feature unlikely, same-sex affairs emerging in elemental, provincial settings), and, as with that film, Ammonite is very much a swirl of atmosphere, subtext and repressed emotions. Review: Francis Lee brings his fiercely naturalistic and sensitive aesthetic to bear on this tale of a bittersweet merging of two lonely souls from across the social divide in 1840s Lyme Regis. Synopsis: Reserved and closed-off fossil hunter, Mary Anning (Kate Winslet), in 1840s Lyme Regis, finds her world slowly turned upside-down when she is tasked with caring for a middle-class woman, Charlotte (Saoirse Ronan), who has been left to convalesce by the sea. Actors: Kate Winslet, Saoirse Ronan, Gemma Jones ![]()
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