One of the hardest films to watch and to write about is the mediocre art-house variety that bears an impressive creative pedigree but is emotionally hollow to the core. Effie Gray's story is simple and potentially appealing. Young Effie (Dakota Fanning) enters a very bad marriage to the up-and-coming author/painter John Ruskin (1819-1900), who, while a reformer, has a reactionary side when it comes to the bedroom. Refusing to consummate the marriage, Ruskin (Greg Wise) declines to release Effie from her vows, setting up a classic 19th-century loveless marriage, the kind that was, for many women, worse than doing hard time in a nasty prison. Effie's only chance at freedom from this brute lies with two friends: a young artist/rebel and potential lover, John Everett Millais (the very handsome Tom Sturridge); and a female mentor, the wise and wily Lady Elizabeth Eastlake (the redoubtable Emma Thompson).
The filmmakers fail to turn Ruskin into an interesting villain, somebody you can sink your teeth into properly hating. Instead we are tossed crumbs of character traits, as when Ruskin is seen shouting platitudes to his coterie of fans, "Gentlemen, paint what you see, draw what you see."
Trapped on the Ruskin family estate, Effie receives no succor from the grande dame Margaret Cox Ruskin (Julie Walters), who says, "You have married no ordinary man." Or, as a perceptive male friend confides, "Your husband is opposed to pleasure, and you are not." At the peak of her domestic bondage after Effie has suffered an emotional breakdown, the family doctor (the always reliable Robbie Coltrane) gives the obstinate Ruskin a proper dressing-down. "There's nothing wrong with your wife that some love and attention won't cure." Or a 19th-century version of tabloid TV's Divorce Court.
In a film that could have used some of the high spirits and bubbly romanticism that the Merchant/Ivory team used to bring to their Edwardian-era classics (A Room with a View, Maurice, Howard's End ), we do get a humorous back-and-forth between an elderly couple whose relationship survived the rough seas Effie is drowning in.
"That poor girl's not happy."
"Neither were you at the beginning. Very grim you were."
"And you were pompous and distant."
Effie Gray sports a Masterpiece Theatre-worthy ensemble – James Fox, Derek Jacobi and the Italian star Claudia Cardinale – who, sadly, are never allowed to properly bare their fangs and roar. But Effie gets a decent boost from the motion-picture rating folks: a PG-13 for thematic and sexual content, and my personal favorite, some nudity. Pity these treats are largely squandered, especially the virile, bearded Sturridge. Opens Friday.