Ammonite

The movie needs Winslet and Ronan’s skills, their ability to semaphore more with sliding glances and tiny gestures than many actors manage with pages of dialogue. There’s pleasure in deciphering these signals.

Ammonite joins a long list of forbidden love stories, yielding a movie presented in washed-out tones, which shines principally thanks to Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan. The result is a slow-moving, somewhat predictable but finally effective period romance that primarily serves as an old-fashioned testament to star power.

A film like this should give life to its characters and reveal essential truths beyond the book-report versions of their existence. But Ammonite keeps you at a distance on a rather vacant, but beautiful, journey.

Ammonite is Winslet’s movie to shoulder, and she carries it as far as she can.

Whether strictly factual or broadly truthful in a poetic sense, its approach to queer history as coded, long-buried document is its most exacting facet. But as a story of science, hidden desire, and sparks re-igniting the soul, it’s a languid affair.