Ammonite, Francis Lee’s (God’s Own Country) tells the familiar of something uniting us all: the internal need to find human connection, even when we externally live a life that suggests otherwise. We often seek out other humans to fulfill some of our needs inside of us, though we often have different capacities. As I write this review during the Coronavirus pandemic, this innate truth could not be more evident. The main difference between now and the past is that we can connect with others through face-to-face video technology, phone calls, text messages, email, social media, and other platforms. But in 1840 Europe (the time and setting of Ammonite), the person had to be physically near you, outside of the occasional letter that might or may not arrive in the mail. There certainly is real-time interaction if you and the other person are in the exact location. Our connections also aren’t authentic, and we live a fabricated existence because it beats being alone. So when we can connect with someone (on whatever mutually agreed upon level), it quickly becomes something we don’t want to let go of. And that is essentially the story of Ammonite.

Heralded by those she’ll never meet, yet barely recognizable even in her small town off the rural Southern English coastline of Lyme Regis, Mary Anning (Kate Winslet – Little Children, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) was one a famous, self-taught fossil hunter. Years later, she still desires the simplicities of prehistoric civilization. She chooses to live a life of solitude and disengagement while caring for her aging mother, Molly (Gemma Jones – Sense and Sensibility, You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger), in a small two-bedroom home that doubles at her store where she sells common fossils to wealthy tourists that she digs up on nearby sea stacks, while also finding stones to clean and polish and before selling them as handcrafted figurines as a means to get by. Nearly silent for much of the film, Mary looks painstakingly miserable as she struggles through a mundane existence, with hardly a connection with anyone other than her mother, which makes you wonder if she’d rather be dead or alive.

One day, Roderick (James McArdle – Mary Queen of Scots), an admirer of Mary and a paleontologist, arrives at her store with his timid and gentle wife, Charlotte (Saoirse Ronan – Lady Bird, Brooklyn). Though there is some meandering to get there, Roderick approaches Mary with an offer to watch over Charlotte for a month, taking her out to walk the ocean each morning and teaching her a little about her trade. At the same time, Roderick hopes that his wife overcomes her “melancholia” resulting from a recent personal tragedy. Though Mary has no desire to have an apprentice for the six weeks that Roderick will be away, she knows that she cannot afford his generous offer of employment, one in which he offers a premium. She is left with no choice in the matter except to accept Charlotte.

Almost immediately, the two clash. Though no fault of her own, Charlotte is seen as a burden that Mary must sidestep around for the next six weeks. Mary is unremittingly passionate and so foolishly proud of her work that she cannot even appreciate the input, let alone criticism, of another. She doesn’t need or want Charlotte’s assistance with anything she has been doing on her own for years and angrily rejects her helping hand. While there seems to be bitter animosity and hostility between them early, they grow closer to one another through proximity. The quietness accompanying the isolation of the secluded and dated cottage brings tenderness and intimacy between the two women. Each has found something they have been searching for in the other.

Despite remarkable differences in culture, pastimes, and personalities, Mary and Charlotte have instantaneous physical chemistry that quickly sparks the emotional stability each has craved for years. While never overly glamorizing or trying to overshadow other parts of the film, the sexual scenes between the two women are so carnal and raw that they will result in what is remembered the most. Though both are due and proper in appearance and attitude for 1840’s England, their yearnings towards one another once behind closed doors bring to the forefront the theme throughout this movie: our instinctual but often suppressed longing to connect with another human being. Their passionate love affair consumes both of them and torments them through their long, tedious days before each evening when they can once again defy social bounds and crawl back into bed with one another.

Ammonite erupts into intense and lustful scenes between two lovers who know their time together has a finite end. Mary and Charlotte are both keenly aware that their affair will end when Roderick returns from his voyage, and it’s as if they are making up for what soon will be a time they will never be able to recoup. Their hidden eroticism contrasts sharply with the triviality that defines every other part of this film. These two women pack a lifetime of passion into a few short weeks. Each woman is ill-prepared for what it might mean for their well-being once their fleeting relationship ends. Instead, in a symbolic comparison, they ignore the perceived rules of decency to crawl toward light after being trapped in a cold, dark, wet cave their entire lives.