For all the good things I’m about to put down on paper about this film, I have to admit that I can easily see this film rubbing some people the wrong way. This is an incredibly cold and detached film by design, depicting the budding relationship between palaeontologist Mary Anning (Kate Winslet) and Charlotte Murchison (Saoirse Ronan), a young woman who was basically thrust into Mary’s care without much say from either party. The sterile colour palette (if it can even be described as having one from the offset), the dreary seaside setting, the distance held between the characters and the cinematic perspective; it can be a bit much to get into right away.
However, I specify that it’s this way by design because that ends up setting the groundwork for writer/director Francis Lee’s depiction of Mary and Charlotte’s character arcs, essentially putting both of them in the same position as Mary’s profession of having to chip away at the hardened outer shell to bring out the natural beauty underneath. But more so than anything that directly connected, there’s a reason why I chose to describe this as ‘cold’ also, as temperature plays into not just the production design but the narrative itself.
Starting with Charlotte getting hypothermia after her husband threw her into the deep end of the ocean under ostensible doctor’s orders, the film shows her and Mary as distant not just from each other and most other people in-frame, but even from their own desires. Much like with the fossils Mary has made her life’s work to restore, the concept of ‘natural beauty’ in women is commoditised, with all credit for bringing that beauty to light largely falling to the men who made them ‘proper’ by association. It’s a fear that even plays into Mary and Charlotte’s relationship, with Mary worrying that it will end up just the same. Just another artwork with a label on it.
But as the two start to warm up to each other, the film itself literally warms up with the gradual introduction of redder and orange-yellow hues into the frame’s palette, reaching a crescendo when it gets to the particularly hot-and-heavy sex scenes. As much as I feel awkward admitting to such things, given my position as part of the male gaze… what am I supposed to do, lie and say that these scenes aren’t incredibly sexy? Maybe it’s because I still have Wattpad-induced PTSD (post-traumatic squick disorder) knocking around in my head from last year, but these moments are quite sensual and, fittingly enough for a film all about the gradual increase in temperatures, scorching to watch.
Something being this understated, yet bracing in its sexual intimacy, is quite the accomplishment, and that’s ultimately why the film’s initial chilliness doesn’t bother me in the slightest. It’s a character study where the production values stay in-step with the characters being studied, showing women opening-up emotionally in a way where it looks like their respective worlds are literally becoming more colourful for having each other involved in it. And because it’s done in such a natural and subtle-enough fashion, it all rings true, from the sexual tension to the romantic complexities to the larger statements on the status of women within these relationships. It’s actually a rather sweet metaphor for love itself: Finding the right partner won’t outright make you better, but maybe they’ll help you find something that’s already in there somewhere. At the risk of sounding cheesy… that sounds pretty accurate to my own experiences.
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