![]() Their story quickly becomes more interesting than the one that is dragging on with Charlotte, and part of me wonders if that could be because Shaw, herself a lesbian, understands how lesbian scenes should explore subtext and can play that off of Winslet. Lieberson is that the instant Philpot and Mary meet, the audience instantly knows that there was a history shared between them. It’s also during this time we are introduced to Elizabeth Philpot (Fiona Shaw), another throwaway character, to show that Mary is drawn to women. She begins to feel her “connection” to Murchison while she is caring for her, but during this time Murchison is actually unconscious. There’s no spark that suggests anything romantic could actually happen between the two women. Anning is easily frustrated with Murchison to the point of telling her to just go take a bath if that is what she was instructed by her doctor to do. ![]() The moment they meet, the energy felt between them is that of a student and teacher. The way Lee decided to explore the relationship between Anning and Murchison becomes misplaced in a film where it feels as though Mary has more chemistry with the fossils she’s hunting than with the woman we are led to believe she had a fiery romance with. ![]() ![]() The entire flirty doctor storyline is thrown by the wayside and instead, his character is used as a plot device to segue into a scene where Charlotte attempts to make Mary jealous. She insists on bringing Charlotte, and once they arrive at the concert nothing more is said or done with Dr. The same doctor attempts to flirt with Anning and asks her to join him at the orchestra. A lot of the film finds Mary unhappily following the orders of men, and only sticking up for herself after Charlotte attempts to make Mary her mistress. He then leaves without any further remarks, and Mary just follows orders. It’s then he suggests that Mary looks after her since it is something “women do for one another” even though Mary protests it. Lieberson (Alex Secareanu) is called to look in on her. For example, the scene in which Charlotte takes ill and finds her way back to the Anning household and Dr. Sometimes it works ( Vita and Virginia ), and in Ammonite’ s case, sometimes it doesn’t.įrancis Lee fills his film with many scenes that, on paper, could have been a strong exploration into the empowering woman Mary Anning was, but instead felt as if someone was talking about something they just don’t understand. We hadn’t been this excited since Gentleman Jack began its run and introduced us to Anne Lister.Įven though there isn’t historical evidence pointing towards a romantic affair between the two women, the recent trend among studios is to take female historical figures and explore their lesbian love affairs (whether they are real or not). When it was reported that the story was going to focus on a lesbian romance between her and Charlotte Murchison there was a part of the lesbian community that lost any ounce of composure (myself included). Better yet, she was going to be played by Kate Winslet. Mary Anning, who had been so overlooked and lost to history was finally going to be explored. I can still remember the excitement that was brought up with the announcement of this film. (It’s also in theaters, but you should not be going to the theater right now because we are still in the middle of a pandemic.) Ammonite explores a romantic relationship between 19th-century paleontologist, Mary Anning (Kate Winslet), and geologist, Charlotte Murchison ( Saoirse Ronan). Unfortunately, with the good also comes the bad, and nothing felt more like a letdown than Francis Lee’s recent film Ammonite that has just become available to rent on Amazon Prime and iTunes. December hasn’t even ended yet, but there’s been a treasure trove of WLW content including Netflix’s The Prom, the OML web series Dating In Place, and Clea DuVall’s Happiest Season which is now on Hulu. October saw The Haunting Of Bly Manor tell the chilling love story between Jamie and Dani, making it hard for any of us to listen to Sheryl Crow’s “I Shall Believe” without uncontrollably sobbing. June gave us Gemma Arterton and Gugu Mbatha-Raw in the World War II drama Summerland. This year may have been terrible if you love socializing and partying, but if you were a lesbian (like myself) then the 2020 quarantine that we all faced became a little easier with so much new women loving women (WLW) content.
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