Ammonite review, Culture Whisper (LFF 2020)
Lesbians in period dramas have increased substantially in recent years (Gentleman Jack, The Favourite, Portrait of a Lady on Fire), opening new narratives beyond the stuffy tales of social etiquette and rigidly heterosexual pairings. Writer/director Francis Lee’s second film Ammonite, following his much-adored gay farmer drama God’s Own Country, is a curious but cold addition to the growing collection.
The premise is an assumption layered with pebbles of truth. On the one hand, it’s a biopic about the now-respected palaeontologist Mary Anning, who gathered and sold seashells from the seashore of Lyme Regis. On the other, Lee reads between the lines of an intimate friendship between her and the married gentlewoman Charlotte Murchison.
