Dir: Francis Lee | UK | 2020 | 120 mins

If seeing the film Mr Turner was like watching paint dry, a viewing of Ammonite last night felt like watching fossils form (a process called permineralization).

As dreary and dull as a rainy English Sunday at the seaside, it’s not helped by two catatonic lead actors who don’t get warmed up until some hot lovin’ well into the second half.

Uneasily co-produced by the BBC and BFI, it felt part-mainstream and part-arty but didn’t deliver on either. I found myself, for each shot, saying out loud either ‘BBC’ or ‘BFI’, depending on the type of shot. So, a pointless, handheld close-up: ‘BFi’; a standard mid-shot of an old hag in period dress: ‘BBC’. You get the idea. My partner shortly tired of me doing this, so I continued to do it in my head.

Frumpy Mary Anning, the famous Lyme Regis fossil hunter, of ‘She sells seashells on the seashore’ fame, is played high on the autism spectrum by Kate Winslett; her lover, Charlotte, played by Saoirse Ronan as if in a coma. Aside from some basic facts about Mary Anning (lived in Lyme Regis, collected and sold fossils, spurned by the predominantly male scientific community), the main focus of the film – an unlikely lesbian love affair between Mary and Charlotte – is completely made up.

A few arresting sequences – Mary literally framing herself amongst the wall of painted portraits of men at the British Museum is just brilliant, and the hottest lesbian sex scene since Mulholland Drive – slightly redeem the dull proceedings.

2/5

Previously on Barnflakes
On the beach at Lyme Regis
Top 10 gay films and filmmakers (Where I mention the lack of lesbian films around. That was 11 years ago; since then there’s been Carol, Portrait of a Woman on Fire, The Handmaiden, Blue is the Warmest Colour and The Favourite… to name just a few of my favourites.)