Ammonite

1840. Mary Anning was a renowned paleontologist but now lives modestly with her mother on England’s wild southern coast. Mary collects ammonites on the beach and sells them to wealthy tourists. One of them, about to leave on a business trip, asks her to take in his convalescing wife, Charlotte. This marks the beginning of a passionate love story that will defy all social barriers and change their lives forever. With "Ammonite," Francis Lee rejects the traditional biopic and reinvents the life of Mary Anning, a forgotten paleontologist of the Victorian era. Faced with the silence surrounding this poor but brilliant woman, he imagines a love story between Anning and Charlotte Murchison. The director explains: "I wanted to give her a story worthy of her," recalling that men "ignored her work or appropriated her discoveries." For Lee, only a relationship between women could offer Anning a truly egalitarian bond. Inspired by women's correspondence from the 18th and 19th centuries, he creates an intimate and fictional portrait that seeks to symbolically redress an injustice. "Ammonite" is less a historical narrative than a sensitive gesture, giving voice to a woman erased from Victorian history. It's impossible not to think of Céline Sciamma's "Portrait of a Lady on Fire" (2019), a masterful historical romance released a year earlier.