Ammonite Should Have Been Better

 

AMMONITE (20200

Directed by Francis Lee

Lionsgate, 120 minutes, R (graphic nudity)

★★ ½

 

 

These days you might anticipate that a hot lesbian love story would do well at the box office and among streaming audiences. After all, it's a topic most mainstream filmmakers are only comfortable discussing, not showing. If only Ammonite had been made a year earlier, it might have fared better. Good vibes were not forthcoming in part because in 2019, the French movie Portrait of a Lady on Fire, whose subject was two 18th century female lovers, was the best film of the year – in any language.  A lot of Ammonite viewers found it boring, not offensive. You might agree, if you like a lot of dialogue.

 

Ammonite has its moments, but it’s certainly no Portrait of a Lady on Fire. For those who don't know, an ammonite is the fossil of a prehistoric mollusk. When you start with that, you’d better have something better to hold your audience. How about two star actresses? Kate Winslet is Mary Anning, a a stellar paleontologist, who found the first nearly complete ichthyosaur skeleton. Yet in 19^th century England, she was not even allowed to present to her own work. To stave off hunger and pay the rent, she sold the skeleton to a man who put his name to it.

 

We come in upon Mary and her mother Molly (Gemma Jones) dressed in shabby clothing and washing white animal figurines whose significance is later explained. That's good, because a lot of things are not explained in this film. We also watch Mary scraping dirt from daily finds fossicked from the beach cliffs of Lyme Regis. Recently she has specialized in small ammonites, as the tourist trade is her steadiest form of income.

 

Mary’s life takes a turn when Roderick Murchison pops into her shop to ask her to teach him what she knows about fossil hunting. Mary is a woman of few words – grunts, gestures, and glares work – and likes to keep her own company, but she needs the money. Roddy is enthusiastic, but his wife Charlotte (Saoirse Ronan) is bored and, we are told, sickly. Perhaps Lyme Regis salt bathing will help. (Good grief, those waters could make you sick!)

 

Later, Roderick offers to pay Mary to take Charlotte on daily walks while he is away for six weeks and once again, Mary needs the shillings and swallows her disinterest. She hadn't planned on being a nurse any more than Charlotte planned to fall for her nurturer. By the time Mary commits oral sex upon her, she's head over heels­– her own; Mary wears sturdy boots. If a woman can't get credit for her labors, you can imagine how badly an open sexual relationship would play in the day. That's just not an option and Charlotte toddles off back to London when Roddy comes to collect her.

 

It might have been better to have ended the film there. Just cue some melancholy music, zoom in on contorted faces stifling tears, and roll the credits. Instead, a contrivance sends Mary to London and we were treated to a rather preposterous final act.

 

There are contrivances and absences shot throughout the film and that's before I tell you that the Mary/Charlotte love affair was invented. The Murchisons already knew Mary; all three were known in the small world of paleontology. Elizabeth Philpott (Fiona Shaw) was also a fossil hunter. We are not told why she is in the film. It's intimated that maybe Mary and she had a May-October romance. Nope, though she did invent a healing salve.  

 

Let's talk about sex, shall we? Because we cannot explicitly see tongues upon body parts, this film escaped with an R rating. It's pretty steamy stuff though, and when you see a naked Ronan crawl upon a naked Winslet's face, I'm good enough at anatomy to figure out what's happening in the shadows of the cleft. It raises a question: Why not just make a celebrity lesbian film? Here’s another: When you consider that the director is a man, is the male gaze at play?

 

I will give Francis Lee a pass. It's only his second feature and so far, I'd say he's not the next coming of Fellini. But I won't completely smash the fossil case. There are reasons to give Ammonite a try.  First, the countryside around Lyme Regis is glorious in its greyness and mist. Credit goes to choreographer Stéphane Fontaine. Second, Winslet and Ronan get boldness points. At this point of their respective careers, they can choose their projects. As two straight women, they took risks to frolic graphically in lesbian guise. Finally, the film did make me seek factual information about the real principals. Education is never wasted!

 

But not much credit goes to Lee. His is another example of the bad judgment that comes from thinking you can invent a better story than the already fascinating one at your fingertips.

 

Rob Weir