Ammonite uncoils romance between Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan’s 19th century fossil hunters

With its wave-lashed coastline, windswept period dresses and sapphic glances between on-screen lovers Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan, it would be easy to compare Francis Lee’s new romantic drama to Portrait of A Lady on Fire, the swooning French lesbian film that dazzled both audiences and critics.

But the British director’s 19th-century slowburner, the follow-up to his widely acclaimed queer drama God’s Own Country, is a less ravishing, showy affair, concerned as much with an exploration of loneliness as it is fanning the flames of new love — a portrait, at most, of a lady on very low simmer.