“Effie Gray,” about the young wife of premier Victorian art critic John Ruskin, is an unlikely disappointment. Set against the unfettered backdrop of eighteenth-century Scotland, England, and Venice, it is written by Emma Thompson, who has a proven track record of penning slyly feminist screenplays (“Wit,” “Sense and Sensibility”), and it boasts all the ingredients of a female-empowering bodice-ripper: stifling family dysfunction, sexual liberation, a lurid love triangle. Yet this too-delicate biopic never develops the spine nor sparkle for which its titular character is celebrated.
A woefully miscast Dakota Fanning doesn’t help. Decked out in bosom-baring gowns, a mane of auburn waves, and a faint approximation of a British accent, she plays Euphemia “Effie” Gray, a Scottish lass of modest means who was raised in the house where Ruskin’s grandfather committed suicide. John (Greg Wise, as dour here as the real-life Ruskin appears in portraits) was so besotted that he wrote the novel The King of the Golden River for her when she was twelve years old. Yet when they wed eight years later, their marriage was never consummated for reasons that are still debated today. Continue Reading →
