#Effie gray movie cast professional#

In London, Venice, and the Scottish countryside, Effie Gray applies its verdant energies to a brilliant dissection of the Victorian penchant for decoupling theory from praxis, with the couple in question the foremost exemplar.Īs such, Laxton and director of photography Andrew Dunn apply an almost pre-Raphaelite eye to the compositions, slowly severing the connection between Effie and John through a lovely, if sometimes overdetermined, juxtaposition of images. As class conflict, the generational divide, and diverging desires unravel whatever romance might once have existed between Effie and John, it’s his fastidious criticism, as much as her wild enthusiasm, that sets the terms of the conflict. Though the narrative pauses to consider the roots of Ruskin’s aversion to sex, including an uncomfortably close relationship with his severe, protective mother, Margaret (Julie Walters), Thompson’s script admirably steers away from Freud and toward the vernacular of the world it inhabits: art.

Gray’s 1848 betrothal to famed English art critic John Ruskin (Greg Wise), champion of “truth to nature,” occurs in the film’s opening minutes, and the remainder of Effie Gray bears witness to the their long unwinding. Turner, the enthralling Effie Gray spins the narrative of one of the Victorian art world’s most mysterious marriages into a study of life lived and life merely examined, a fecund fairy tale in reverse. Though it lacks the high rigor of Mike Leigh’s near-contemporaneous Mr. It’s here that the film, directed by Richard Laxton from a screenplay by Emma Thompson, first challenges our expectations for the period romance, working away from the happy ending. Tangles of brown and yellow leaves reach in from the edges of the frame, choking the path before her, and indeed the fable she relates, of a young girl plucked from obscurity by an erudite older man, has the feeling of a fantasy long since finished. Her ostracism is alleviated by her marriage to Millais, with whom she will eventually have eight children.“Once, a beautiful young girl lived in a very cold house in Scotland,” Effie Gray begins, with the retrospective glance of many such stories, as our heroine (Dakota Fanning) strolls toward the camera through an autumnal garden.

#Effie gray movie cast professional#

The judge rules in Effie's favor, citing her husband's 'incurable impotency.' While her internationally renowned husband continues his busy professional and social life, Effie, a spirited, outgoing woman, is ousted from society and forbidden to attend any event where Queen Victoria is present. The physical examination and embarrassing courtroom testimony about her intimate life induces a psychosomatic paralysis that lasts 10 days. During the trial, which creates a scandal and more discussion than the ongoing Crimean War, a doctor (Robbie Coltrane) testifies that the plaintiff is a virgin. In order to prove non-consummation of the marriage, Effie is forced to undergo a physical examination that confirms her virginity after five years of marriage to Ruskin. Author and art historian Lady Elizabeth Eastlake (Emma Thompson, who wrote the screenplay), Effie's friend and champion, encourages her to seek an annulment from her husband. Ruskin's sexual dysfunction and his wife's sexual innocence and inexperience in the repressed atmosphere of Victorian England are further complicated by Effie's affair with pre-Raphaelite painter Sir John Everett Millais (Tom Sturridge) after Effie poses for the artist and falls in love with him. In 'Effie Gray' Dakota Fanning plays the title character, Euphemia 'Effie' Gray, wife of the 19th century's greatest art historian and critic, John Ruskin (Greg Wise).The synopsis below may give away important plot points.