It doesn’t matter what a film’s plot is about when it stars such incredible actors such as Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan. Whenever you see actors at that caliber headlining a film, tickets are automatically sold. And that’s exactly why people have been so excited about seeing “Ammonite.”
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As seen in the trailer for “Ammonite,” the film follows the story of an aging paleontologist that is a bit down on her luck after being shunned by the scientific community. That’s when she is offered a chance to earn money while allowing a young woman to tag along on her rock-finding excursions. From there, an intimate relationship is formed and both of their lives are changed forever. The film stars Kate Winslet, Saoirse Ronan, Gemma Jones, James McArdle, Alec Secareanu, and Fiona Shaw. Francis Lee, the filmmaker probably best known for “God’s Own Country,” is the writer and director of “Ammonite.”
We were able to see the film as part of its screening at this year’s TIFF. While we did have some positive things to say, we weren’t very impressed with the film. Our review said, “While all the makings of a soul-wrenchingly impossible affair seem to be here, ‘Ammonite’ sadly feels too distant, underpowered and colorless for its own good, as if somewhere down the line, its heart had died and hardened like a fossil waiting to be discovered.”
“Ammonite” has been playing the various film festivals this fall and will play at the BFI London Film Festival on October 17. The film will debut in US theaters on November 13. You can watch the new trailer below.
Here’s the synopsis:
In the 1840s, acclaimed self-taught palaeontologist Mary Anning works alone on the wild and brutal Southern English coastline of Lyme Regis. The days of her famed discoveries behind her, she now hunts for common fossils to sell to rich tourists to support herself and her ailing widowed mother. When one such tourist, Roderick Murchison, arrives in Lyme on the first leg of a European tour, he entrusts Mary with the care of his young wife Charlotte, who is recuperating from a personal tragedy. Mary, whose life is a daily struggle on the poverty line, cannot afford to turn him down but, proud and relentlessly passionate about her work, she clashes with her unwanted guest. They are two women from utterly different worlds. Yet despite the chasm between their social spheres and personalities, Mary and Charlotte discover they can each offer what the other has been searching for: the realisation that they are not alone. It is the beginning of a passionate and all-consuming love affair that will defy all social bounds and alter the course of both lives irrevocably.