It is a sensation he never has as a director, where he feels “very focused and blinkered and immersed”, overseeing every detail obsessively. “I don’t think I could ever believe it for myself,” he says. He remembers Leigh, who remains a friend, telling him how good he was. Victoria Wood wrote a tiny part for him in her sitcom Dinnerladies, while Mike Leigh cast him in a small role in his Gilbert and Sullivan extravaganza Topsy-Turvy. I always wanted to tell stories, but the frustration came from not understanding how somebody from my background, with my lack of privilege, could do that.”Īlong the way, he met two heroes. Nevertheless, he got into drama school in London, then spent 15 years as a jobbing actor.
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“One teacher asked us: ‘Has anyone shown you how to fill out your DSS and housing benefit forms? Because you’ll need those once you leave.’” “Like many queer people in rural places, I left to try to find my tribe, my family.” His comprehensive school had not led him to expect much from life. And it’s an economy, in the same way that Mary sells her most precious fossils to put food on the table.”Īt first, he was content on the farm: “The hills and the woods were my playground.” Growing up, and realising he was gay, brought its own problems. The animals were my friends.” Was it upsetting when those friends were slaughtered? “No, because you understand when you grow up with livestock that there’s always going to be dead stock. “My parents worked all the time and weren’t around. I always wanted to tell stories, but the frustration came from not understanding how somebody from my background, with my lack of privilege, could do that' Lee spent 15 years as a jobbing actor – 'a really bad one. Has that been his experience? Another thoughtful pause. I would like to be part of a group, or part of something.” His films concern introverted figures who feel unseen until they find a lover. Eventually, he gives a little growl, as if annoyed with himself. Would he like to feel more at ease socially? Or is he content to chisel away quietly at his work, the way Mary does with her fossils? He gazes out of the window, to the hill where God’s Own Country was shot. Sometimes I want people to talk to me as Francis, not Francis who made some films.”
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You go somewhere like a dinner party – listen to me, a dinner party! – and people want to talk about your work. “It amplifies the discomfort and has caused issues for me. I find it hard to be me, and to be truthful about me.” The networking side of the film industry is one he finds especially traumatic. “Like Mary, I have found it very difficult to find my voice, professionally and personally. But while Lee, like Johnny in that movie, is a farmer's son, he says it is Ammonite rather than its predecessor that represents the nearest he has come to self-portraiture. God's Own Country, his exhilarating 2017 debut, was "about two queer lads on the side of a hill in Yorkshire in bad weather". Gay, rural, working-class love stories are Lee’s speciality. Photograph: Brian Anderson/Barcroft Media via Getty Images And because men had blocked and overlooked her, and reappropriated her work for themselves, I felt that this relationship couldn’t be with a man.”ĭirector Francis Lee on the red carpet at the 2017 Edinburgh International Film Festival opening night gala.
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I wanted to contextualise her in terms of a relationship. What I tried to do was to take this working-class woman, who hadn’t been recognised in her lifetime, and elevate her.
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I know I can’t talk for Mary, because I’m not a 19th-century palaeontologist, but I do think I can talk with her.
![kate winslet ammonite kate winslet ammonite](https://kinomeister.de/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/ammonite-trailer-2.jpg)
“It’s been a real lesson for me in identity politics.