![]() Rating: PG-13 for thematic and sexual content, and some nudity. The film itself begins to feel like Gray, a pretty bird in a gilded cage with nowhere to fly.Ĭast: Dakota Fanning, Greg Wise, Emma Thompson. Desperate to be freed from John, Effie embarks on a life-changing journey to become one of the first women in history to seek a divorce from her husband. How can an artist have so little art in his soul? He should be a fascinating character instead, the film is content to keep nudging the viewer in the ribs to say, "Hey, get a load of this creep." There is compassion to spare for Gray, but precious little empathy for, or nuance to, Ruskin, who was certainly damaged in part by his parents' suffocating devotion. Those instances are few and far between, but they are welcome rays of light piercing the stolid gloom: an assignation gone wrong in Venice the rumblings of a love affair with one of Ruskin's pupils and, best of all, a friendship with the smart, vivacious Lady Eastlake (Emma Thompson, who could not be a more welcome presence), the first outsider to intuit the dysfunction in Gray's marriage. The film is as pitiless as Ruskin and comes to life only when Gray does. ![]() As the years pass without a hint of warmth from her husband, Gray slowly starts to go mad for want of affection. Few guests visit, and those who do are made to feel unwelcome. ![]() Their household is airless, isolated, a place where Ruskin's peculiarities have been coddled into neuroses. She finds even less comfort in the company of her in-laws, a pair of cold and particular people who clearly view Gray as an interloper. Cast & Crew Saskia Keatman, Lady Rondell Kelly Healey, Lady Dashwood Frida Baranek, Duchess di Alba Claudia Cardinale, Viscountess Riccardo. When Gray presents herself to Ruskin on their wedding night, all blushing enthusiasm to consummate their union, he recoils in revulsion at her naked body, leaving the perplexed Gray to spend her first night in a strange house alone. His passion for her beauty - the way he makes her hold a pose, or tucks back a strand of hair, or repositions her face to catch the light just so - seems at first an artist's sweetness as they take the carriage ride to his parents' house, where the couple will live.īut when he calls her his muse, he's being literal, not romantic. A passion project for Emma Thompson (who wrote and stars in the film), this compelling drama explores Victorian social and sexual mores via the true story. Ruskin (Greg Wise) has known and essentially courted Euphemia "Effie" Gray (Dakota Fanning) since she was a child, and he wastes little time once she's of a marriageable age. It starts, at least, with a sort of love. The result is a film that, although handsome, does little to shed light on this singularly strange marriage. It's a relationship ripe for dramatization - we know what didn't happen behind their closed doors, so what did happen? Turns out, as "Effie Gray" posits, nothing much, and nothing much doesn't exactly set off dramatic fireworks on-screen. It proved a scandal in the Victorian era when, in a rare and bold move, Gray took charge and petitioned for an annulment. Richard Laxton’s film, written by Emma Thompson, follows the story of. And the story of Victorian art critic John Ruskin's five-years-unconsummated marriage to Effie Gray is, on the face of things, certainly unbelievable. An entertaining cast make the curious Effie Gray more engaging than it might otherwise have been Marriage, dear boy, is all about learning how to wait In what turned out to be an afternoon of staid, true-life Victorian romances, Effie Gray turned out to be the odder. Thompson’s intelligent screenplay explores the truth of the breakdown of their marriage, its eventual annulment and Effie’s sensational new relationship with one of Ruskin’s acolytes, the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood painter John Everett Millais (Tom Sturridge) in this handsomely shot, brilliantly performed film with a fantastic ensemble cast.Some stories are no more believable for being true. This famous episode has become a metaphor for both a Victorian innocence and prudishness (with Ruskin’s apparent disgust at the reality of the female body seen as a reaction to the artistically perfect ideal that this famous aesthete was so used to seeing in art) and also a particular kind of tabloid prurience, in society’s reaction to the scandal. When Ruskin wished to dissolve their short marriage, he noted to his lawyer that Effie “was not formed to excite passion… there were certain circumstances in her person that completely checked it”. Gray was the young bride of art critic John Ruskin (Greg Wise). A passion project for Emma Thompson (who wrote and stars in the film), this compelling drama explores Victorian social and sexual mores via the true story of Effie Gray (Dakota Fanning). ![]()
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