Critic Reviews

One of Lee’s brilliant choices is to refuse to put a soppy romantic gloss on the affair. He suggests instead that passion can blind lovers to a true understanding of each other as easily as it can open their eyes.

One of the finest films of the year: a shiveringly passionate period piece.

An exquisite achievement.

There's an austerity to the film — long shots of stone and candlelight, clipped dialogue — that can feel rigorous, almost grim. But Lee (God's Own Country) is only building a richer kind of mood, and priming the canvas for his actresses, who reward that faith with remarkable performances.

Ammonite will make you feel as if you’re right there in Lyme with Mary, sharing her loneliness and delighting in the small moments of joy she allows herself, all the while breathing in the crisp sea air.

This is the work of a mature filmmaker in full command of his voice, yielding remarkable performances, chief among them a complex character study of stoicism and desire from Kate Winslet that might be the best work of her career.

The movie is set up to pull the heartstrings, and it’s very effective at doing so. You care for the characters and what happens to them, and you leave the film wanting to know more.

From the beginning of Ammonite, writer/director Francis Lee trusts his lead performer to convey an incredible amount without dialogue. And that trust pays off in one of the best performances of Kate Winslet’s career.

Winslet and Ronan are magnificent together, conveying the escalation of intimate moments, from holding hands to kissing to embracing to an extended and graphic coupling that beautifully conveys the avalanche of feelings each is experiencing as they make love.

As much a tale of the patriarchal suffocation of those who break from outdated conventions as it is a love story, the film gains much of its traction as a result of the performance of Kate Winslet, whose nonverbal acting represents one of the finest portrayals of her career.