#Ammonite film cast professional#

The exception, Todd Haynes' Mildred Pierce reworking, cast her as a ringer for Joan Crawford Lee also sees in her something of that blend of ferocity and grand tragedy, albeit turned silently inward, as necessitated by the 19th-century provincial mores of grey, salty-aired Lyme Regis. Since winning her hard-earned Oscar twelve years ago, she's either been sportingly sewn into ensembles or mismatched to garish starring vehicles that haven't played on her natural, somewhat regal flintiness as an actor. But it feels a while since we’ve really looked at Winslet this way, too.

#Ammonite film cast professional#

It’s a briefly breathtaking moment of pure, besotted portraiture, for a woman not accustomed to being looked at - either in her largely solitary personal life, or her professional one, where her work is appropriated or disregarded by pompous male peers. Her head turns just so, until it’s perfectly caught against one of the gallery’s framed historical portraits - its own picture of sorrow and pride, tied up in a solemn bonnet. But more directly: on a bittersweet, fish-out-of-water trip to London, pioneering female palaeontologist Mary Anning tours the British Museum, and we gaze upon her as she gazes upon the paintings.

Not in the figurative sense, though Stéphane Fontaine’s intricately lit, rain-hued cinematography has been doing that throughout. There’s a moment toward the quiet, fragile-hearted end of Ammonite where director Francis Lee frames Kate Winslet’s face as if it were a painting.