SnoopyStyle
Effie Gray (Dakota Fanning) is the eager teenage bride to prominent art academic John Ruskin (Greg Wise). On the other hand, he is cold to her affections. His unreasonably overprotective mother (Julie Walters) tells her to leave him alone to his work. He champions pre-Raphaelite paintings and John Everett Millais (Tom Sturridge) in particular. Sir Charles Eastlake is the president of the academy and his progressive wife (Emma Thompson) befriends Effie. Effie grows lonely in the stifling home and more attracted to Millais setting off a scandal in Victorian England.The first half is dull like John Ruskin. There are snippets of goodness from Walters and Thompson. Fanning is captured by the costume drama. Sturridge starts to make himself known at the midpoint. The slow pacing really kills this. Society has imprisoned Effie and the narrative has imprisoned this movie. One way to empower Effie would be to make her more compelling and more capable in the artistic world. 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.
king322
This movie is a beautiful story about a young woman and her failure to thrive when imprisoned as a house pet.I was surprised to read the negative reviews, but I believe they are written from people who do not accept the idea that women love sex, women want a full marriage, and a woman has a right to her own body. Those are very modern ideas! The women's revolution was a long time coming in this world, and it's far from over. Most of history never allowed her to have a voice. That is just the facts.I loved the way the movie was done and Dakota Fanning was perfect. Emma Thompson was superb, and she wrote it! Well done!
Angus T. Cat
I was looking forward to seeing Effie Gray. I knew the story of Effie's marriage to John Ruskin from the TV series Desperate Romantics.I was very disappointed by the movie. While Desperate Romantics played the story for laughs, with a comic air, Effie Gray told the story dramatically. Or tried to, rather.The screenplay only told part of the tale of how Effie married John Ruskin but their marriage was unconsummated. No one knows exactly why, but it seems to be because of Ruskin's disgust with "her person". So perhaps the old story that Ruskin had never seen a naked woman and thought they were smooth like statues, and was repulsed to find on their wedding night that Effie had public hair, may have a grain of truth in it. The movie shows Effie and John finally getting away from his oppressive parents and living in Venice. However, Ruskin makes it clear that he is in Italy to work and leaves his wife to find her own amusement with Italian officers. Effie resists being seduced by one officer and realizes there's something she isn't getting in her marriage. However, the pace of the story moves slowly..... very slowly....I kept saying to my husband, when are they getting to the good bits? Finally Ruskin, Effie, and the artist Millais, leave for Scotland for Millais, to paint Ruskin's portrait. At last they were they getting to the dramatic bits when Millais and Effie fall in love. It was slow.... very slow... lots of scenes of rain and rocks and waterfalls and Ruskin making remarks that turn off Millais. The Ruskin in this movie is so cold and callus there's nothing sympathetic about him. Millais though is Mr Nice Guy without much depth to his character. And that's about it. Effie goes to see her friend (played by Emma Thompson) who discreetly arranges a lawyer for Effie, Effie invites her younger sister to visit her in London, Effie leaves the house with her sister, saying they are going to visit their mother in Scotland, and Effie serves Ruskin with annulment papers. The end. Where was the drama of the annulment? In this movie there is only a brief scene where Ruskin and his parents shut the door on the lawyer after the papers are given to him. There's no mention of the struggles Effie had to get the annulment through the courts, no mention of how she and Millais married a year after the annulment was granted, and no mention of how Effie was then not permitted to attend any occasion with Queen Victoria, as a woman who had been previously married could not be allowed in the presence of the Queen. This movie was a missed opportunity that took a gripping and fascinating story and turned the major characters one dimensional. Ruskin is a fruitcake, Millais Mr Nice Guy and Effie is an Innocent Victim. Shame- with a better screenplay and tighter direction this could have been a revealing drama about Victorian England behind closed doors. Too bad the script didn't allow any real drama to develop, and like Ruskin shied away from nakedness (There is a scene with Effie spying Millais taking a bath in a lake. Nice to have some full male nudity for the ladies. Alas, he is seen from the back and from a distance.) There's no risk of showing characters' raw and stripped emotions. There's no schmutz here- unlike in Desperate Romantics, which, with all its playing the historical facts with a light touch, led the audience to really care for Effie, Millais, and art in the nineteenth century.
subxerogravity
I did like the story.She was a little girl being courted by an old man who married her once she became of age but would rather pleasure himself than touch his wife who he married for the purpose of cultural stature it seems. She needs a way out which was quite difficult in the Victorian-era of England. I love movies set in the Victorian age. The costumes the art direction. The set design did stand out in this pic. It reflected how cold and distant the family this little girl married into was.Also like how it was set up to be very stage like in the movement of certain people in and out of the scene.Dakota Fanning did a fine job. Give her an A for always choosing challenging roles vs the easy ones girls her age usually take. I don't see this role doing anything for her career but I could be wrong.Impress that Emma Thompson wrote it.But overall the movie was too slow and the plot could have been summed up in a smaller amount of time. It seemed that a lot of the movie was to set up the frustration the little girl had with not being able to perform any "wifely" duties and to make her husband and in-laws hated. I found them strange yes, but the film never quite explains the strangeness, which makes it fall short.It's based on a real story and It's probably better to hear that than to watch the movie. That'll waste less time and get to the point faster.
