The UK Trailer for Francis Lee’s much anticipated second feature Ammonite has been released. Ahead of it’s UK Premiere at BFI London Film Festival we get a look at the film starring Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan.
Lee’s debut God’s Own Country some called UK’s answer to Brokeback Mountain. A critically appraised film which showcased LGBT films have much right in mainstream cinemas. Lee an openly gay filmmaker described by Stonewall as ‘authentic voices behind the camera’.
Ammonite sees us go back to the Victorian era following the romance between palaeontologist Mary Anning and geologist Charlotte Murchison.
This one potentially looks could earn Lee awards recognition, possibly Oscar contention?
In the 1840s, acclaimed self-taught paleontologist 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.
The cast also includes Gemma Jones, James McArdle, Alec Secareanu, and Fiona Shaw.
Ammonite doesn’t have an confirmed UK or Irish release date. If you can’t wait to see this, the film will close this year’s BFI London Film Festival on 17th October . The film is been shown in various cinemas around UK , full list here.
