Effie Gray review – a handsome but inert portrait

The story of Victorian art critic John Ruskin’s appalled reaction to the sight of his wife’s naked body (he knew of the female form only through hairless paintings and sculptures) has become emblematic of a wider cultural objectification of women which remains strikingly contemporary. This Emma Thompson-scripted account of Effie Gray’s ill-fated marriage (the release of which has been delayed by groundless plagiarism suits) intelligently dramatises the prison-like nature of Effie’s status while struggling to engage us in what is essentially a non-relationship; it may be billed as a “love triangle”, but there’s precious little love on display, even in our heroine’s growing affection for pre-Raphaelite painter John Everett Millais. Instead, we have a handsome but rather inert portrait of a suffocating social milieu in which it is left to Thompson herself to inject vibrant relief as the independently minded Lady Eastlake. Meanwhile Julie Walters is typically imposing as Ruskin’s poisonous mother, against whom Dakota Fanning’s downtrodden daughter-in-law struggles to hold her own.