Attentive with his visits, it’s clear that he has an eye for Mary, but when he invites her on a date to a musical recital at his home, she insists that she be accompanied by Charlotte.Īlthough dutiful towards her mother, and sensitive about her great loss of a husband and so many children, Mary appears to have a closer bond with rocks and fossils than she does for the people around her. The handsome bearded Secareanu brings a tenderness and charm to the role that make him the kind of doctor anyone would enjoy a house call from. Lieberson guilt trips Mary into giving up her own bed and attending to Charlotte saying, “It is a woman’s position to care for a fellow sister”. Courtesy of Neon.Ĭonveyed with unsteady handheld photography, there’s further disruption to Mary’s life as Charlotte is carried into her home having fallen ill following what was intended to be a restorative dip in the bitterly cold sea, but what the town’s doctor, Lieberson ( God’s Own Country’s Alec Secareanu), refers to as “water torture”. Again, Mary has little option but to reluctantly agree when Roderick asks her to spend time with the young grieving woman while he’s away in return for payment. Embarking on an archeological tour of the continent, he decides that rather than putting a dampener on his trip, Charlotte should be left behind in Lyme Regis while he goes on alone. In the couple’s hotel bedroom there’s not even so much as an embrace or goodnight kiss, with Roderick resisting her movement towards him, believing that physical intimacy between them is only necessary for procreation. Charlotte, who has recently lost a child, receives no empathy or affection from her husband who describes her to Mary as suffering from “mild melancholia” and as a “shadow” of her former “funny, bright” self. Clearly in need of the money, and with Molly listening in, Mary is unable to refuse Roderick’s request to spend some time closely observing her at work. He initially neglects to introduce his beautiful young wife Charlotte (Saoirse Ronan) until Mary berates the woman for handling one of her finds. This routine and their social isolation is interrupted by the arrival of the rather stiff upper class Roderick Murchison (James McArdle) who lets himself into Mary’s store and worksop one day. One gets the sense that their hand-to-mouth existence has been the same for many years, with Mary searching the nearby beach for fossils, however harsh the weather might be, to sell to tourists in their small shop, while Molly stays at home to prepare their meals and polish the figurines that represent her eight deceased children. Mary (Kate Winslet) shares a humble but well-kept home with her ailing widowed mother Molly (Gemma Jones) in the rugged Dorset coastal town of Lyme Regis in the 1840s.
Writer-director Francis Lee’s follow up to his stunning 2017 debut feature God’s Own Country, immerses us in the imagined day-to-day life of an often overlooked historical figure, English fossil collector and palaeontologist Mary Anning, in the absorbing, exquisitely crafted Ammonite.
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