EFFIE GRAY

I watched the film about Pre-Raphaelite muse and John Ruskin's wife 'Effie Gray' at the weekend and thoroughly enjoyed it. Produced by and, the somewhat contentious film script, written by Emma Thompson* starring Dakota Fanning in what for me is a tour de force of understated self contained performance as the tormented, somehow wholly lost Pre-Raphaelite ideal and muse who made the unfortunate mistake of marrying the group's leading supporter and benefactor in John Ruskin before finding true happiness with painter John Everett Millais. 

The legend has it that Ruskin was so unworldly he found the wedding night nakedness of his breathtakingly beautiful wife 'revolting', 'disgusting' for reasons that were assumed to be his revulsion at finding her replete with pubic hair, something the art of the world up to that time will have ill prepared him for. 

Effie had said

"He alleged various reasons, hatred to children, religious motives, a desire to preserve my beauty, and, finally this last year he told me his true reason... that he had imagined women were quite different to what he saw I was, and that the reason he did not make me his Wife was because he was disgusted with my person the first evening"

Whereas Ruskin had merely hinted at the depth of the problem 

"It may be thought strange that I could abstain from a woman who to most people was so attractive. But though her face was beautiful, her person was not formed to excite passion. On the contrary, there were certain circumstances in her person which completely checked it."

 The reason for Ruskin's disgust with "circumstances in her person" is still largely unknown but the subtext is clear. Various suggestions have been made, including revulsion at either her pubic hair or indeed her menstrual blood. The denouement after the story is told here becomes all the more enjoyable to me because of Mr and Mrs Everett Millais going on to live a full and happy life suggesting that the problem was not Effie's at all but lay elsewhere (or not - ahem sic). This strikes me as a flaw in the film and could have been used to round upon the ignorance of the day with happiness finally achieved and Ruskin banished to his perverse intellect.

David Suchet, Greg Wise and Julie Walters as The Ruskins

His parents, here played admirably well as super-repressed by Julie Walters and the ever reliable David 'Poirot' Suchet, seem to bear the brunt of the blame  We will never know really but Victorian society at the time could well have led him to be naive to the point of crass ignorance and when the doctors finally examine Effie found her 'perfect' in every way, joy is unconfined by then and one can only wonder at Ruskin's disturbed and dysfunctional lack of knowledge & the educational standards of the day. The implication is clear, as he was fascinated in the young Euphemia Chalmers Gray from at least the age of 12, when another young teenage girl's parents wrote to Effie enquiring as to Ruskin's suitability as a suitor and prospective fiancé she put them off in no uncertain terms describing him as an 'oppressive husband'. 'Uncertain terms' had ruled the day it must be said. His notion that the female ideal of beauty may well have required him to focus on the prepubescent is not as unusual as one might have thought and needs some degree of cultural understanding but the marriage later to her true love in John Everett Millais and their happy marriage at that (they went on to have 8 children!) every moment and the birth of each and every child from a proper and true fulfilling loving relationship must have felt like a personal inditement against the oppression and 'old fashioned' way she had been treated in her first marriage. Despite Ruskin's confirmed belief the brotherhood was searching for truth the irony here is painful almost as it is love that is the answer to his intellectual search which the artists he vaunted understood so well.

It is a quiet, dour and rainy windswept film but I thoroughly enjoyed it. One of the most heart rending love stories ever, it played a bit fast and loose with the historical accuracy of the day. Many of the painting's used to illustrate Millais' painting of Effie are those largely featuring Lizzie Sidall rather then Effie herself but nothing wrong with that I suppose as some poetic licence is allowed. Frankly they chose them because Fanning most resembles Siddal and for me if you had chosen say Kelly MacDonald as Effie as in all the paintings there being a stronger similarity to her than to Fanning but I am splitting hairs really as Fanning is brilliant here. They seem to have chosen the paintings to illustrate or echo the likeness of the  actor and her own personal attributes towards an ideal of the brotherhood muse of red hair, pale skin and a somewhat contained and calmly centred beauty.

John Everett Millais' real paintings featuring his wife to be and muse Effie Gray

MILLAIS - The Order of Release

Effie at Glenfinlas, 1853, by Millais

Gray in middle age by Millais

Fanning is little short of mesmerising to me here, as is Tom Sturridge as Millais and suitably longhaired and windswept he is too, as brooding as he is handsome. He too may resemble Rossetti more than Millais himself but none the worse for that. A bit more depth to the character here might have helped but the writing is to blame there, no reflection on Sturridge the actor.  Greg Wise as the tortured pompous egotist, the sanctimonious and tortuously repressed Ruskin is brilliantly performed here, a bully and nasty piece of work leaves no doubt as he is portrayed here as the acting is truly brilliant. 

Effie runs from confronting the more physical standards of a libidinous Venice

Greg Wise as the supercilious and detestable bully John Ruskin

A character presumably invented for the scene for the wonderful Robbie Coltrane as the doctor who recommends a holiday in Scotland (sic!) and a truly wonderful understated performance from Derek Jacobi as Travers Twiss the lawyer who is finally asked to draw up the marriage annulment or suit of nullity, on the grounds of non-consummation due to chronic 'incurable impotence', who realises with admirable gentleness and sensitivity what is truly going on and both recommending Mrs Ruskin be taken away from the in-laws home to be shown 'attention, affection' and well, love as a prescription is heartbreaking stuff!

 The 'holiday' to Brig o' Turk in the Trossachs here is dank overgrown and drench, impenetrable somehow and frankly miserable but Millais sees the marriage for what it truly is and falls in love with the long suffering Effie still dazed from the rejection by her husband on her wedding night five years  earlier! Ruskin leaving them alone for several days while he goes to lecture in Edinburgh, defying contemporary mores and polite social behaviour tests even these two most moral of companions and yet it is Ruskin who comes over as the manipulative one taking advantage of the moment to at least try to get rid of 'the wife' by now so disgusted is he. Ruskin sees nothing but a freak of nature and cannot be more wrong. We almost feel sorry for him!

Effie and Millais try to contain their affections

Emma Thompson as wife of the Director of Royal Academy Sir Charles Eastlake who take note of the younger woman's dire situation and realises a feminist note of a woman's sexuality and 'requirement' of her husband is well seen and  portrayed here to underline the thesis of the screen play

Millais' portrait of Ruskin which is used as a device to show the artist's wrestling with the conflict of his benefactor's support with the newly discovered hateful treatment of his mentor's wife 

Effie determines her fate . . . . 

Dakota Fanning at the film's launch

I nearly forgot to mention other cast members included James Fox as The Master of the R.A. (Thompson's character's husband) who surely must have been lost in the edititning as he serves little purpose here. 
Also an early heart throb crush in Claudia Cardinale wasted here really as 'Viscountess' in the Venetian scenes but also the rising star of Russell Tovey who we love as the Ruskin's man servant 'George' who it transpires as another veiled dig at Ruskin's ego is really named 'John'  forced to
 take George as christened by the master of the house as "we cannot have two Johns now can we"?! 

Dakota and Claudia Cardinale

*The film sadly suffered several law suits citing plagiarism 

I do realise that I am out of synch with the film reviews of the time with the possibly part exception of Mark Kermode who ignores Fanning and Sturridge and Wise even for the bit part afforded Thompson which is wide of the mark although he does allow the film is 'intelligent' which is more than any other reviewer I have read has done. Simply I disagree. It is no blockbuster but a quiet studious 'intelligent' and sensitive film of a difficult subject at the early twinges of the birth of feminism which I would maintain many of the Pre-Raphaelite women are at least cyphers for and are plainly under estimated in feminist history IMHO see Jane Morris, Lizzie Sidall, Effie Gray her self et al. Worthy of further enquiry and no mistake. 

the cinematography and art direction is beautiful too