Fanning does a fine job of portraying a woman who's beaten down and then learns to stand up, and Emma Thompson lights up the screen in a small role as Effie's sole ally, but the two acresses aren't enough to make Effie Gray watchable. There's just no light in this movie, no joy. It is based on the true story of a young woman who married John Ruskin, a man eighteen years her senior. Though they perhaps echo the subject material, the drab, underlit interior shots and dreary exterior scenes - especially during an extended sojourn in Scotland - fail to make the heart quicken as it should. Effie Gray opens after the wedding of its eponymous protagonist (Dakota Fanning) and John Ruskin (Greg Wise) but its not long before you sense that their marriage is headed for trouble. Sitting in my watch list for quite some time was Effie Gray, a movie directed and written by Emma Thompson. It doesn't help that this period drama looks perpetually dismal and dark. We feel for her - it's difficult not to empathize when her husband is such an awful beast - but we get so little insight into why he is the way he is that we stop caring why. ( Spoiler alert: She eventually worked up the nerve to leave her spouse, with whom she lived with unhappily.) But Effie Gray, the film, starts with what could have been a classic love triangle tale but instead becomes an uninspired, laboriously told one. Effie Gray, the historical figure, is a real-life tragic character with a feel-good ending. Trapped in a loveless marriage, the young wife of Victorian-era art critic John Ruskin finds herself falling for an artist and looking for a way out.
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