FIRST LOOK: Ammonite

An actress that is on the rise professionally is Saoirse Ronan. An actress already on top of the game is Kate Winslet. What’s better in 2020 for their careers than a romance between two characters they play?

Yes, with the trailer for Ammonite (can I stop and say I love that title), a romance, dropping Tuesday, comes the news that Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan were allowed to work out the details of the explicit sex scene between their characters.

“Saoirse and I choreographed the scene ourselves,” Winslet told THR about one of the film’s explicit sex scenes. “It’s definitely not like eating a sandwich. 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’ll start here. We’ll do this with the kissing, boobs, you go down there, then you do this, then you climb up here.’ I mean, we marked out the beats of the scene so that we were anchored in something that just supported the narrative. I felt the proudest I’ve ever felt doing a love scene on ‘Ammonite.’ And I felt by far the least self-conscious.”

Kate Winslet, Saoirse Ronan Choreographed ‘Ammonite’ Sex Scenes | IndieWire

If the trailer doesn’t give you enough backstory, here’s the story info:

In the 1840s, acclaimed self-taught paleontologist Mary Anning works alone on the wild and brutal Southern English coastline of Lyme Regis. The days of her famed discoveries behind her, she now hunts for common fossils to sell to rich tourists to support herself and her ailing widowed mother. When one such tourist, Roderick Murchison, arrives in Lyme on the first leg of a European tour, he entrusts Mary with the care of his young wife Charlotte, who is recuperating from a personal tragedy. Mary, whose life is a daily struggle on the poverty line, cannot afford to turn him down but, proud and relentlessly passionate about her work, she clashes with her unwanted guest. They are two women from utterly different worlds. Yet despite the chasm between their social spheres and personalities, Mary and Charlotte discover they can each offer what the other has been searching for: the realization that they are not alone. It is the beginning of a passionate and all-consuming love affair that will defy all social bounds and alter the course of both lives irrevocably.

Story info via Rotten Tomatoes

Another period piece of sorts? I’m there. Little Women sold me on Saoirse Ronan’s talent. Kate Winslet won me over with Titanic.

Ammonite opens in United States theaters on November 13, 2020.

Advertisement