Fossil Fuel
For those not into palaeontology, an ammonite was a squid-like sea creature (like a nautilus) from the Cretaceous period, which became extinct around the same time as dinosaurs and is now found in fossil form, tightly packed in rock – especially along Devon and Dorset’s Jurassic Coast. It’s something real-life Victorian Lyme Regis resident Mary Anning made her living from, and something that serves as a fitting metaphor for the interpretation of her life seen in Francis Lee’s sophomore film.
Mary, as written by Lee and brought to life by Kate Winslet, is a tightly packed person; gruff, undemonstrative and closed, keeping herself and her mother afloat selling the coiled rock treasures to amateur scientists and seaside tourists. But when she meets grieving wife Charlotte (Saoirse Ronan), and takes her on as a student in her work, Mary’s hard exterior is chipped away to reveal the wonder beneath. “The ammonite is symbolic,” agrees Ronan, via Zoom from her UK home. “Working on fossils takes so much time, and care, and patience to find the beauty in something, and the strength of something. And that is what these two women do for one another...”
That care, time and support was also Lee had come across Anning’s existence when he was looking for a gift for his fossil-loving boyfriend.
