Ammonite is writer-director Francis Lee’s second film after God’s Own Country, one of the best films of 2017, and possibly the best film about a closeted gay Yorkshire sheep farmer falling for a migrant worker ever. This is another unlikely romance, but set in the 19th century between the real-life palaeontologist Mary Anning (Kate Winslet) and real-life Charlotte Murchison (Saoirse Ronan), whose wealthy husband had an interest in geology. Mary and Charlotte were friends yet there is no historical evidence they had an affair. This is all poetic licence but told so poetically you will substantially buy it, albeit with a few reservations. Plus it’s Winslet and Ronan and while I’m not usually a sucker for BOGOF offers, you’d surely be crazy to turn this one down.
It all takes place in Lyme Regis. Mary is poor and collects the fossils — clawing out rocks with bare hands, smashing them open with a hammer — that she sells as ‘tourist tut’ from the begrimed shop where she lives with her ailing mother (a very touching Gemma Jones).
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