The new trailer for Francis Lee’s upcoming romance drama starring Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan has just been released, and it looks like it’s going to be a tough one. From what could be gathered from the trailer, the movie is about a beautiful but forbidden love between two women during the Victorian era.
Set in 1840s England, the story follows paleontologist and fossil hunter Mary Anning (Winslet), and Charlotte Murchison (Ronan), who end up in a romantic relationship after Charlotte’s husband hires Mary to look after his wife. “I don’t want to go back to the life I had before you,” Ronan’s character Charlotte can be heard saying while in another scene Winslet’s Mary sketches the bare shoulders of her apprentice.
In one of the scenes, the actresses had to perform sexual intercourse, which Winslet described as “definitely not like eating a sandwich.”
“Saoirse and I choreographed the scene ourselves,” she said. “I just think Saoirse and I, we just felt really safe. Francis was naturally very nervous. And I just said to him, ‘Listen, let us work it out.’ And we did.”
“We marked out the beats of the scene so that we were anchored in something that just supported the narrative,” she explained, adding: “I felt the proudest I’ve ever felt doing a love scene on Ammonite. And I felt by far the least self-conscious.”
The name of the film, Ammonite, refers to an ammonoid fossil, especially one of a later type found chiefly in the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods, typically with intricately frilled suture lines. Winslet’s character Mary works selling common fossils to tourists. On the metaphor of fossils, Ronan spoke with Anne T. Donahue as part of the Toronto International Film Festival: “I guess the whole point is that the ammonite, the fossils, symbolizes the beginning of something. It takes so much time and care and patience to find something beautiful in it and that’s what these women do for each other.”
The Francis Lee film is set to premiere at BFI London Film Festival after which it will soon hit UK cinemas. Watch the official trailer below.
