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Ammonite review – a chilly love among the fossils

Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan’s 19th-century romance showcases their talents but doesn’t warm the heart

This handsome second feature from the writer-director of 2017’s brilliant God’s Own Country is another hesitant love story set against the backdrop of a bracing British locale: the sea-battered Dorset coast around the famous Cobb of Lyme Regis harbour. It has been the setting for some overcooked screen moments in the past, although the emotional weather forecast here is frosty with occasional storms.

Kate Winslet is superbly flinty as Mary Anning, the 19th-century palaeontologist whose under-attributed finds have graced the display cases of the British Museum since her childhood. An early image sees a handwritten label for the historic “Sea Lizard, found by Miss Mary Anning” being tuttingly replaced by a floridly embellished sign reading “Ichthyosaurus, Lyme Regis, Presented by H Hoste Henley Esq”. It’s a concise way of illustrating both Anning’s outsider status (her role in the discovery is effectively usurped) and the snobbery of an establishment averse to inclusivity.

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