![]() Is John Ruskin supposed to be closeted and can they make that part of the story? This movie needs something to energize it and spice it up.ĮFFIE GRAY was strangely overlooked by the public despite a sterling cast enacting Emma Thompson's screenplay re-enacting the lives of the Victorians John Ruskin and is failed marriage to Effie Gray and the entry of romance between Effie and the brilliant Pre- Raphaelite painter John Everett Millais. One way to empower Effie would be to make her more compelling and more capable in the artistic world. Society has imprisoned Effie and the narrative has imprisoned this movie. Sturridge starts to make himself known at the midpoint. ![]() Fanning is captured by the costume drama. There are snippets of goodness from Walters and Thompson. Effie grows lonely in the stifling home and more attracted to Millais setting off a scandal in Victorian England. ![]() Sir Charles Eastlake is the president of the academy and his progressive wife (Emma Thompson) befriends Effie. He champions pre-Raphaelite paintings and John Everett Millais (Tom Sturridge) in particular. His unreasonably overprotective mother (Julie Walters) tells her to leave him alone to his work. On the other hand, he is cold to her affections. Fanning though is rather good, Derek Jacobi and James Fox are rather wasted in their cameos.Įffie Gray (Dakota Fanning) is the eager teenage bride to prominent art academic John Ruskin (Greg Wise). Wise and Sturridge are not the strongest actors. This is a handsomely mounted leisurely paced film, there is some location filming in Venice but it is rather dreary, inert and conventional. ![]() The film does not tell you that after the annulment, Effie married Millais and Ruskin never married again. Ruskin also encourages his wife to have a developing relationship with his art protégé Everett Millais (Tom Sturridge) even if Millais at one point tells Ruskin how this would look to polite society. It probably did not help that Ruskin chose to live with his parents who seemed to have a heavy influence on the adult Ruskin. We are given very little to go on as to why Ruskin would not consummate the marriage, after all Effie is pretty which means either he was turned off by the female body or was homosexual. Not that great an age difference but clearly Greg Wise as John Ruskin looks too old and sadly too one note, then again his wife Emma Thompson wrote the screenplay and also plays a supporting role as Lady Eastlake. Ruskin when he was 29 years old married Effie Gray (Dakota Fanning) who was 19 years old. John Ruskin a famed social thinker, reformer, art critic and painter has his character thrashed in this film. ![]()
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