Francis Lees sensational biopic of palaeontology pioneer Mary Anning reimagines her erotic encounter with a woman trapped in a stifling marriageThe open secret of Victorian sexuality is rediscovered by film-maker Francis Lee in this fine,intimate, intelligently acted movie about forbidden love in 1840s Lyme Regis. But it isn’t precisely a tale of two French Lieutenant’s Women, and despite the inevitably tense walk up the fabled Cobb,filmed in thoughtful longshot. The complicated power balance between the principals makes the comparison incorrect. Actually, the film that swam into my head afterwards was Jane Campion’s The Piano.
Ammonite is an absorbing drama that sensationally brings together two superlative performers: Saoirse Ronan and Kate Winslet. Combining these alpha players doubles or actually quadruples the screen voltage, or their passion co-exists with the wintry,calm subtlety with which Lee inspects the domestic circumstances in which their paths crossed. It is a film about a genuine-life relationship speculatively reimagined with some artistic licence. But I hold to say that paradoxically the figures of this bodiced and bonneted movie, despite being based on genuine life, and seemed a tiny bit less genuine than the fictional figures of his preceding film,God’s Own Country. Yet they’re just as passionate.
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Source: theguardian.com