Francis Lee
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Filmography
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Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019)
Directed by Céline Sciamma
influenced Ammonite (2020)
Themes Plot Characters
It would be easy to nod to Céline Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire as a reference point, a lesbian period drama released last year which similarly embraced the seaside air as an opportune backdrop for forbidden romance to fizz and thrive.
It’s certainly unfair that Ammonite is already being compared to Céline Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire (released earlier this year), but perhaps only natural, given the similarities the two share, both being beach-set romances between two women.
Winslet’s quick-tempered, taciturn Anning recalls Holly Hunter‘s mute Ada in The Piano , the windy seaside location and the female romance is always going to draw comparison with Céline Sciamma‘s superlative Portrait of a Lady on Fire , and it suffers next to his earlier work.
Through no fault of his own, Lee's film has little choice but to be compared to Céline Sciamma's vastly superior "Portrait of a Lady on Fire," also about two fierce women near the sea, who fall deeply in love, and are devastated to be forced apart.
As early as its trailer, “Ammonite” unavoidably gave off vibes similar to 2019’s “Portrait of a Lady on Fire.”
Ammonite recalls another littoral lesbian costume drama released last year, Céline Sciamma’s 1770-set Portrait of a Lady on Fire , a film that also stumbles as a polemic, railing against the oppression of women artists.
Blue Is the Warmest Color (2013)
Directed by Abdellatif Kechiche
influenced Ammonite (2020)
Themes Visuals
For those expecting the sumptuous passions of Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019) or the anguished romance and sexual expressiveness of Blue is the Warmest Color (2013), then Ammonite may seem to miss the mark of our growing expectations of romantic lesbian representation, both period or otherwise.
The sex scenes, although far from the graphic level of Blue Is the Warmest Color, are sufficiently explicit to convey the intensity of feelings experienced.
Bravo to Lee for showing sex scenes betweem them that are explicit and unflinching much like in Blue is the Warmest Color, but, most importantly, it's the unflinching emotions of the film that enriches it the most.
The sex scene is “Blue is the Warmest Color” explicit, so explicit that it’s the centerpiece of the film and considering how little we learn of the women’s lives and the state of the science, basically its entire reason for existing.
Is Lee simply a male ally to lesbians, or is that image just another instance of masculine exploitation, like Abellatif Kechiche’s Blue Is the Warmest Color ?
They are the best lesbian sex scenes by two heterosexual actresses helmed by a gay director, since Todd Haynes' Carol (2015) with Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara.
It’s a stony facsimile of other lesbian period dramas like Portrait of a Lady on Fire or Carol , possibly by design, that doesn’t make enough of an interesting point to serve as more than an awards-baiting footnote.
Perhaps the lovers not being in turmoil about their forbidden passion or being fearful of getting discovered means that Ammonite doesn’t necessarily feel as queer a movie as say Carol or Portrait of a Lady on Fire , neither is it as emotionally potent.
There are countless historical lesbian melodramas out there in the world, like the gorgeous Carol , perfect The Handmaiden and the exquisite Portrait of a Lady on Fire , just to name a select few.
The benign institutional charm of Night at the Museum (2006), with its ebullient Easter Island heads, has no place in 2020, and certainly not when Black Panther ’s Killmonger murdered a curator at the fictional Museum of Great Britain for refusing to deaccession Wakandan art.
The beaches of Brighton in My Policeman are slightly sunnier than those of, say, Dorset in 2020’s Ammonite, but the chilling effect is the same.