#Cast of effie gray movie#

Turner, features in both films in very different guises: A precocious prig in Leigh’s film, he’s imagined by Thompson as a more reserved, coldly passive-aggressive figure. Turner,” in which disenfranchised women also suffer at the inattentive hands of Victorian art-scene titans. Result: a film which is as prim, prudish and passionless as its characters.If nothing else, “Effie Gray” would merit appraisal as a fortuitously timed companion piece to Mike Leigh’s soon-to-be-released “Mr. Instead of investigating Ruskin’s dysfunctional sexuality through a 21st century lens, or dissecting Gray’s marriage from a post-feminist angle, or satirizing the self-imposed prison of stifling social manners that made these poor souls so pointlessly miserable in the first place, Thompson seems satisfied to serve up yet another surface-level rehash of Victorian costume-drama clichés. Some of the blame for this dismally underpowered effort must lie with Thompson, who not only penned the screenplay but also takes one of the most sympathetic minor roles as Gray’s kindly London protector Lady Eastwick. Critics are bound to make unflattering comparisons with Mike Leigh’s upcoming period biopic Mr Turner, which features the same milieu and some of the same key characters, but shot with a much more self-consciously painterly eye. They even manage to make Venice look dull, though admittedly the Scottish landscape scenes have a certain rain-soaked splendor. Director Richard Laxton, whose track record is mostly in British television, and cinematographer Andrew Dunn typically frame dimly lit interiors with a flat, cramped, small-screen grammar.

#Cast of effie gray movie#

The film’s UK distributors have spotted this similarity, reproducing the canvas on promotional posters alongside Fanning’s face.įor a movie at least partially concerned with artistic ideals of beauty, Effie Gray has a surprisingly drab visual palette. Reminiscent of a young Kate Winslet at times, Fanning is also an uncannily close facial match for Shakespeare’s doomed heroine Ophelia in the celebrated Millais painting, though Gray was not the model. Her wounded, emotionally conflicted performance is not exactly layered, but it never lapses into melodramatic victimhood either. Naturally, the coincidental fact that he is married to Thompson off screen had no bearing on him winning this lead role purely on his own merits.įanning is more impressive as Gray, mimicking an upper-class English accent with aplomb, though the real Effie reportedly spoke with a Scottish brogue. Wise seems like a baffling choice of leading man to play an innocent, sexually confused Mummy’s Boy trapped in late adolescence. Actors often play younger or older, of course, but an obviously middle-aged Ruskin inevitably adds extra layers of unintentional Freudian weirdness to the character’s already dubious relations with both his teen bride and his domineering parents. There are many more wrong notes here, notably the miscasting of Wise, almost two decades older than Ruskin, who was 29 when he married the 19-year-old Gray. Gray’s subsequent long and happy marriage to Millais is only opaquely signposted too, another odd omission. Strangely, however, she does not even address Ruskin’s bodily revulsion issues until the film’s final act, withholding a key piece of the jigsaw for no clear reason. Since this is pure speculation, Thompson wisely keeps the incident off screen. Biographers have pored over his meaning ever since, with some suggesting the unworldly man of letters was repulsed by his young bride’s pubic hair or menstrual blood. In real life, during the scandalous court case that followed, Ruskin notoriously blamed “circumstances in her person” for his failure to rise to the occasion with Gray. Gray’s marriage eventually breaks down when she seizes the initiative, filing for annulment on the grounds of Ruskin’s impotency. During a therapeutic stay in Scotland, she starts to form a flirtatious love triangle with rising pre-Raphaelite artist John Everett Millais ( Tom Sturridge). Ignored by her increasingly priggish husband, Effie becomes paranoid and sick. She moves into his family home on the leafy fringes of South London, where Ruskin’s overbearing mother Margaret ( Julie Walters) greets the interloper with all the icy territorial suspicion of Mrs Danvers in Hitchcock’s Rebecca. Victorian London’s leading art critic, John Ruskin ( Greg Wise) marries his teenage Scottish wife Euphemia “Effie” Gray (Fanning) in 1848.