Ammonite review roundup: Here is what critics think of Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan film

BBC’s Caryn James wrote, “If you have seen the film’s trailer, best to shift your expectations. Fiery passion between the women does not emerge until well into the film. Lee’s style is more poetic and suggestive, as he takes advantage of an earlier era’s restraint to create a slow-burn love story.”

IndieWire’s Kate Erbland wrote, “Loving someone doesn’t ensure you will always be able to understand them; Lee and his stars may love these characters, but they never understand them. Neither can we.”

The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw wrote, “It is tempting to look for the metaphorical properties of fossil-hunting: the cracking open of stones, the discovery of secrets, the thrillingly real evidence of life. Of course, Charlotte and Mary’s love is not a fossil; it lives ecstatically in the flesh-and-blood present. But for Mary that’s what the ammonites and ichthyosaurs do as well. It is a love story that is also a fascinating artefact: quixotic, romantic, erotic.”

Richard Lawson, writing for Vanity Fair, wrote, “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.”