Bonnets by the sea, longing, and no electricity? It must be gay
Melancholic lesbians gather around for there is a new trailer for Francis Lee’s upcoming Victorian era drama Ammonite and it is the gayest one yet.
Starring Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan, Ammonite is set in 1840s England and centres around the real paleontologist and fossil hunter Mary Anning (Winslet), and Charlotte Murchison (Ronan), who has been sent by her husband to convalesce by the sea. As we can see from the trailer, the two then proceed to walk the shoreline together and fall into a passionate but restrained relationship full of longing glances and lingering touches, the wistful music in the background letting us know that something forbidden is taking place.
“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.
Back in August, Winslet spoke about the process behind the sex scene in the film which she 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.”
Ronan has also been speaking about the film and the metaphor of the fossils. “I guess the whole point is that the ammonite, the fossils, symbolises the beginning of something,” she said in a conversation with writer Anne T. Donahue as part of the Toronto International Film Festival. “ 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.”
Ammonite has its UK premiere out of the BFI London Film Festival and will be coming soon to UK cinemas. In the meantime watch the trailer below and enjoy these pictures of the – uncharacteristically upbeat and modern for a lesbian film – upcoming “gay Christmas rom-com” Happiest Season.