Ammonite
Gaga | Release Date: November 13, 2020 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
72
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 41 Critic Reviews
Positive:
30
Mixed:
11
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
San Francisco ChronicleG. Allen JohnsonNov 11, 2020
An exquisite achievement. Read full review
100
The TelegraphRobbie CollinSep 12, 2020
One of the finest films of the year: a shiveringly passionate period piece. Read full review
100
BBCCaryn JamesSep 12, 2020
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. Read full review
91
The Film StageOrla SmithOct 17, 2020
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. Read full review
91
Entertainment WeeklyLeah GreenblattSep 12, 2020
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. Read full review
90
Film ThreatLorry KiktaDec 4, 2020
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. Read full review
90
The Hollywood ReporterDavid RooneySep 12, 2020
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. Read full review
88
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliDec 23, 2020
As much a tale of the patriarchal suffocation of those who break from outdated conventions as it is a love story, the film gains much of its traction as a result of the performance of Kate Winslet, whose nonverbal acting represents one of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. Read full review
88
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperNov 18, 2020
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. Read full review
88
RogerEbert.comBrian TallericoSep 12, 2020
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. Read full review
85
TheWrapSteve PondSep 13, 2020
Ammonite is spare and hushed. Its pleasures are subtle, but they linger. Read full review
80
EmpireBeth WebbMar 22, 2021
Another tenderly executed triumph from Francis Lee, and a captivating, serrated starring performance from Kate Winslet. Ammonite is a fine feat in British filmmaking craft. Read full review
80
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternDec 18, 2020
If there’s any fault to be found with Ammonite, it’s in the film’s deliberateness. Read full review
80
The New York TimesJeannette CatsoulisNov 12, 2020
The movie needs Winslet and Ronan’s skills, their ability to semaphore more with sliding glances and tiny gestures than many actors manage with pages of dialogue. There’s pleasure in deciphering these signals. Read full review
80
Los Angeles TimesJustin ChangSep 12, 2020
Ammonite, a work of art rather than science or history, has no qualms about departing from the known record — and does so with wit, beauty and a modernism that feels all the more bracing in this Victorian context. Read full review
80
The GuardianPeter BradshawSep 12, 2020
It is a love story that is also a fascinating artefact: quixotic, romantic, erotic. Read full review
78
Austin ChronicleJenny NulfNov 12, 2020
It’s an ambitious, sometimes too bitter, second feature, but Lee somewhat manages to corrode the too-often fetishized queer period drama into something much more modern than its setting suggests. Read full review
75
ObserverRex ReedNov 13, 2020
To me, the sex in Ammonite is nothing short of a yawn. The movie is also ponderously slow — the cinematic equivalent of liquid valium. But the two accomplished actresses at the helm balance two sides of a difficult equation exquisitely, exact and admirably immersed in total dedication to their roles, and supported by a fine peripheral cast. Read full review
75
ABC NewsPeter TraversNov 13, 2020
Yes, it’s about paleontology, but hold the yawns. Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan hit new acting peaks in Francis Lee’s deliberately-paced portrait of two ladies on fire in Victorian England. Read full review
75
Original-CinKaren GordonNov 12, 2020
The film has a wonderfully quiet, reflective, and intimate tone, but that lovely subtlety ultimately robs it of some of its impact. Read full review
75
CNNBrian LowryNov 12, 2020
Ammonite joins a long list of forbidden love stories, yielding a movie presented in washed-out tones, which shines principally thanks to Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan. The result is a slow-moving, somewhat predictable but finally effective period romance that primarily serves as an old-fashioned testament to star power. Read full review
75
Boston GlobeTy BurrNov 12, 2020
The sex scenes, when they arrive, are unexpectedly, passionately frank, and the characters and the film alike seem stunned in their aftermath. It’s not a movie that has figured out how to end. Read full review
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Barry HertzNov 10, 2020
Which is why when Mary and Charlotte’s first big sex scene arrives – a moment destined to become a meme unto itself – its explosive energy feels undercut by a lack of genuine connection between the two women. Both performers are throwing the entirety of themselves into Lee’s world, but only one is offered much of anything to grab hold of. Read full review
70
The New YorkerAnthony LaneNov 9, 2020
Yet the movie persuades you, and bears you along. It may lack historical grounding—though Mary and Charlotte were certainly friends, the existence of any further intensity is pure, indeed wild, supposition—but it feels emotionally earthed, and, far from rising above the spartan brutishness of the early scenes, Lee digs deeper still. Read full review
67
The A.V. ClubKatie RifeSep 12, 2020
Ammonite is too pallid to really get your blood flowing. Read full review
66
Paste MagazineNatalia KeoganNov 25, 2020
What is most puzzling about Ammonite is its dedication to playing up the ridiculous, misogynistic leanings inherent of the time while simultaneously diminishing the groundbreaking work and strong personalities of both women. Read full review
63
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsNov 13, 2020
What’s missing is the vital emotional turbulence of Sciamma’s modern classic, or of any three-dimensional story of passion and feeling. The compensations here are smaller, but they’re welcome, too; they’re more about two fine actresses digging for what’s underneath the obvious contours. Read full review
63
The Associated PressLindsey BahrNov 12, 2020
A film like this should give life to its characters and reveal essential truths beyond the book-report versions of their existence. But Ammonite keeps you at a distance on a rather vacant, but beautiful, journey. Read full review
63
New York PostSara StewartNov 12, 2020
Being a lesbian period piece, the film’s earned inevitable comparisons to last year’s “Portrait of a Lady on Fire.” Sure, it’s similar, minus the chemistry, humor and joy. There are definitely corsets in both. Read full review
63
Slant MagazineDavid RobbNov 9, 2020
Francis Lee’s compulsion to make Mary Anning stand in for something broader than herself keeps tripping up the film. Read full review
60
The Irish TimesDonald ClarkeMar 26, 2021
We are left with a perfectly respectable, eminently professional slice of prestige arthouse. Nobody with even modestly open-minded sensibilities will walk away in a blind fury. Few will leave in an ecstasy of transcendence. Read full review
60
CineVueMatthew AndersonMar 22, 2021
Given its place and time, Ammonite’s coldness is perhaps apt, but its stiff upper lip may well not do enough to make yours quiver, either. Read full review
60
Rolling StoneK. Austin CollinsNov 10, 2020
What Ammonite needs is to dig deeper and imagine more — to find a Mary Anning of its own to excavate what’s hidden inside it. Read full review
60
New York Magazine (Vulture)Alison WillmoreSep 20, 2020
Ammonite is Winslet’s movie to shoulder, and she carries it as far as she can. Read full review
58
Vanity FairRichard LawsonSep 12, 2020
Whatever the truth of Anning and Murchison’s time in Dorset together was, Ammonite could have done whatever it wanted. It chooses instead to do close to nothing, and leaves us, quite like its central pair, helplessly grasping for more. Read full review
50
Movie NationRoger MooreNov 25, 2020
Ammonite is an explicit and seriously sexy sex scene wrapped in a dull period piece that illuminates neither the characters nor the titular fossils that bring them together. Read full review
50
Washington PostAnn HornadayNov 11, 2020
Rather than a movie that breaks the mold, it looks like Anning has inspired one we've seen before. Read full review
50
The PlaylistTomris LafflySep 12, 2020
While all the makings of a soul-wrenchingly impossible affair seem to be here, Ammonite sadly feels too distant, underpowered and colorless for its own good, as if somewhere down the line, its heart had died and hardened like a fossil waiting to be discovered. Read full review
50
VarietyPeter DebrugeSep 12, 2020
Ultimately more symbolic than satisfying, the project leaves one grateful that two stars of this caliber would take on such a story, while wishing their efforts had left us with a more resonant artifact. Read full review
50
IndieWireKate ErblandSep 12, 2020
Even in their most intimate scene, Mary and Charlotte and their love remain at a remove. Read full review
45
PolygonSiddhant AdlakhaDec 17, 2020
Whether strictly factual or broadly truthful in a poetic sense, its approach to queer history as coded, long-buried document is its most exacting facet. But as a story of science, hidden desire, and sparks re-igniting the soul, it’s a languid affair. Read full review
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