Pale­on­tol­ogy and sap­ph­ic pas­sions com­bine in the Ammonite trailer

The recent suc­cess of Por­trait of a Lady on Fire left cin­e­ma audi­ences starved for more, crav­ing their next fix of staid pas­sions between beau­ti­ful, mis­un­der­stood women in a sap­ph­ic peri­od piece. Spe­cif­ic as those needs may be, view­ers won’t have to wait much longer to ful­fill them, with the trail­er for Ammonite now here to scratch that ​“a past era’s unen­light­ened men can­not hope to com­pre­hend the del­i­cate attrac­tion flow­er­ing between two women’s sen­si­tive souls” itch.

The sopho­more dra­ma from God’s Own Coun­try direc­tor Fran­cis Lee, the film pairs Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan in a furtive affair that reju­ve­nates both of their char­ac­ters. Winslet plays a strug­gling pale­on­tol­o­gist sell­ing com­mon­place fos­sils to tourists in the south­ern Eng­lish shore of the 1840s; Ronan plays the new gal in town, remand­ed to Winslet’s cus­tody by a hus­band that can’t be both­ered to keep an eye on his wife. He just wants them to keep each oth­er busy and out of his hair, but lit­tle does he know just how busy they’ll keep each other.

Lee earned wide­spread plau­dits for his thought­ful, empa­thet­ic depic­tion of queer love in his pre­vi­ous fea­ture, and there’s no rea­son to believe he won’t deliv­er those dis­tinct plea­sures once again. The inex­orable courtship between Winslet and Ronan’s char­ac­ters starts slow­ly, with brusque­ness and stand­off­ish­ness giv­ing way to ten­der­ness and open­ness, and an only briefly glimpsed passion.

Dis­trib­u­tor NEON real­ly plays up the sim­i­lar­i­ties to Céline Sci­amma​‘s unlike­ly inter­na­tion­al sen­sa­tion with the trail­er, the fran­tic vio­lins recall­ing the Vival­di that played out the ear­li­er film. The women walk down a shore­line on an over­cast day, say­ing noth­ing, look­ing at each oth­er and then away like house cats – does Sci­amma get roy­al­ties for this?

Though NEON will bring this film to whichev­er Amer­i­can the­aters will accom­mo­date patrons lat­er in the fall, UK dis­trib­u­tor Lion­s­gate has yet to make plans for a release. But with this much cloudy weath­er and repres­sion and gri­mac­ing, sure­ly a British release won’t be long, an instant box-office smash all but assured.

Ammonite will pre­mière online as part of the Toron­to Inter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val in Sep­tem­ber, and then run in US the­aters on 13 November.