Effie Gray

Dakota Fanning’s almost hypnotically-blank performance eventually becomes a dulling drag on Effie Gray, Emma Thompson’s long-awaited screenplay about the infamous 1848 marriage of art critic and aesthete John Ruskin to Euphemia (Effie) Gray, who left him for the pre-Raphaelite artist John Everett Millais.  Filmed in 2012 but delayed due to sequential lawsuits, Effie Gray is finally making a muted appearance in cinemas shortly before the year’s heavyweight film about a Victorian painter- Mr. Turner - limbers up for an awards season campaign.

Thompson herself, playing Effie’s advocate Lady Eastlake, is a welcome warm presence in her own film, as is young Tom Sturridge as Millais – he’s fresh and unforced and alive in the little air he is given. 

Thompson has selected a story of severe sexual repression for her first original screenplay. Effie’s drama fanned the fires of Victorian righteousness with its beautiful, scandalous society beauty, a critic with a penchant for underage girls, an unconsummated marriage, public affair, and ensuing scandal. Effie Gray seems to lack any sense of urgency, though; it’s blandly reminiscent of everything from Wings of A Dove to Portrait of a Lady, Bright Star to last year’s Invisible Woman, without ever really finding its own signature brush-stroke.

Nobody knows what actually took place in the bedroom between Effie (Fanning), aged 19 at the time of her marriage and Ruskin, aged 29 (rather improbably played by the 48-year-old mutton-chopped Greg Wise). One thing we know didn’t happen, however, was sex; during annulment proceedings it was insinuated that Ruskin was offended by the sight of Gray’s pubic hair and thus failed to consummate the six-year marriage.

Much has been written on the subject, and Thompson’s screenplay plays heavily on the chilly Ruskin’s dubious history with Gray – they met when she was a child, and at least part of the reason she married him was for money. By all accounts, Gray was a sparky, vivacious character, who went on to lead a vital life as Millais’s wife and mother of his eight children. Speaking with an English accent, which is not entirely effortless, Fanning is guided towards a more subtle performance by first-time director Richard Laxton (TV’s Burton And Taylor, Him and Her).  Yet while there is some reference to Effie being dosed with laudanum by Ruskin’s swivel-eyed, over-protective mother (played with relish by Julie Waters), that still doesn’t quite explain the inertia away.  Wise, meanwhile, labours away on Ruskin as a slightly pantomime repressed British aesthete without any shred of self-defence, instead jumping to his feet to declaim: “What is the purpose of art?” or “I detest parties!”

Thompson herself, playing Effie’s advocate Lady Eastlake, is a welcome warm presence in her own film, as is young Tom Sturridge as Millais – he’s fresh and unforced and alive in the little air he is given.  Yet the characters can seem under-written, from Effie herself to the distant Ruskin, as the $15m production flits between Venice, Ealing Studios and the Scottish highlands. Cloaked in reds and purples, crushed velvets and tweeds to the point where the characters almost meld into the bracken, Effie Gray wears its colour palette on its sleeve.  Costumes by Ruth Myers are handsome, and lensing by Andrew Dunn is able.

British acting royalty studs the Effie Gray gallery – from David Suchet (playing Ruskin’s father) to Derek Jacobi, James Fox and Robbie Coltrane, alongside a cameo from Claudia Cardinale. The film even has an artist in residence, Alexander Newley (who is also Joan Collins’ son). As such, it’s a truly pedigree production, which won’t lack its defenders, although they might be reluctant to get out the vote theatrically.