Ammonite

Ammonite (2020) is a period romance from director Francis Lee that you can watch online on iFILM. Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan lead, set along a cold, windswept stretch of the English coast in the 1840s.

Mary Anning makes her living chipping fossils out of the cliffs and selling them to tourists. The scientific gentlemen of London took the credit for her discoveries long ago, leaving her with damp lodgings, little money and a near-silent mother. When a visitor pays her to look after his ailing wife Charlotte, prescribed sea air and rest, two women separated by class and temperament slowly fall into orbit around each other. What grows between them upends both their lives.

Lee shoots it spare and tactile: grit under fingernails, the chink of a hammer on shale, wind doing the work of a score. The real Anning was a genuinely important paleontologist, though the love story is the filmmakers' invention. This one lives on two performances and long silences, so it rewards patience over plot. Stream Ammonite (2020) online on iFILM.