Ammonite

I just wanna point out that the scenes with no dialogue are the one's that say a lot ... Kate Winslet masters the way she talks only with her eyes.

The first word that comes to mind when reviewing Ammonite is implicit. The only other review (at the time of writing) laments the lack of explicit sex scenes. There's no need for them; this is an understated love story, not a porn film. The sex scenes are few in number, but shot with delicacy and restraint. In fact, very little of this movie is explicit. An awful lot is left to the imagination of the viewer. Back stories are hinted at, touched briefly upon and only once filled in. Even the ending is left to us to imagine. Implicit, rather than explicit, is the watchword for this movie. The performances of the four female leads are in the same vein. Subtly acted throughout; never overdone. A really beautiful movie.

Ferociously slow and meandering, lacking the passion and emotion of its contemporaries and a little too long for what it bestows, which is a rather bleak and salty tale of two lost and lonely women, one of which has had her flint removed and couldn't catch light if you dosed her in kerosene and dropped her into the sun. There's always, at least, a little optimism and expectation, hope perhaps, even in the most forlorn of our turbulent times, but seemingly not here.

Kate Winslet plays Mary Anning, a famous fossil hunter / palaeontologist with exhibits in the British Museum, who must now sell ammonites to tourists etc just to keep her and her mother, Gemma Jones, going. Into her life comes convalescing, well off Saoirse Ronan who stays with Winslet until she has recovered. A deepening relationship begins.

Remarkably touching, beautifully acted - especially by Winslet - and nicely lean love story set against the backdrop of a drab, miserable 19th century Lyme Regis. The 2 leads make a completely believable couple and the affection is bought forward slowly and ultimately quite explicitly. It is a quiet gentle film with no obvious romance or great outpourings of emotion or melodrama and all the better for that. I loved the ending.

I rather enjoyed this movie. It is about a subject and person foreign to me, a self-made female paleontologist in the 19th century England. Because she was female she had no real chance for recognition until long after her death.

Kate Winslet is one of my favorites over the years, here she is Mary Anning with a love of the seashore and fossils and little time for people and small talk. She gets a visit from a fellow paleontologist who leaves his young wife there to get healthy, to me she seemed unhappy from depression, not an organic sickness. This role is played well by another of my favorites, Saoirse Ronan as Charlotte Murchison. At first both are reluctant but they eventually form a bond.

It was speculated that Anning was a lesbian and although not substantiated that is the arc of her character here. All in all a very well made movie combining historical facts and fictional projections. Filmed in the SW England coastal region where Anning lived and discovered her fossils.

At home on DVD from my public library. My wife skipped, she was on a golfing trip.