EFFIE GRAY

It’s the scandal that everyone knows: John Ruskin, pre-eminent Victorian art critic and champion of the Pre-Raphaelites, was so shocked on seeing his young bride’s pubic hair on their wedding night, that he refused to consummate their marriage. Six miserable years later, Effie Ruskin, née Gray, obtained an annulment and subsequently married Ruskin’s protégé, John Everett Millais.

Ruskin’s ‘disgust with her person’, as Effie put it, is clearly flagged up in Emma Thompson’s screenplay for this superb production, which drips as much class as it does Scottish rain.

Thompson’s sterling work as an anti-human trafficking campaigner shows through in her script. On the one hand, this is a gleaming period piece with exemplary visuals and quality BBC chocolate-box casting. On the other, it is a revelatory film about the quiet devastation wrought by emotional abuse. Director Richard Laxton manages this with impressive subtlety, also knitting together a superb depiction of the strange land of Victorian art, which serves as an excellent counterpart to the rambunctious BBC series Desperate Romantics.

Living with her parents-in-law in London and far from her own family and friends in Scotland, Effie’s claustrophobic situation is perfectly portrayed. Greg Wise is unrecognisable as Ruskin – a petulant child in the guise of a middle-aged man hailed as a genius. Evolving from uncle-ish friend (Ruskin befriended Gray and her family when she was a child, and married her at 19) into cruel scoundrel, Wise’s Ruskin is both repellent and electrifying. The infamous wedding night is not sensationalised, and suggestions that Ruskin may have been a paedophile are delicately, but unmistakably, managed, particularly during a visit to London from Effie’s young sister.

As Ruskin’s doting parents, David Suchet and Julie Walters are magnificently oppressive, swirled in Denmark Hill fog and ambition for their son. Thompson paints them in shades of pure Dickensian villain, with Walters especially relishing her role as maternal monster.

Thompson gives herself a plum role as Effie’s champion Lady Eastlake, wife of the Royal Academy president and shrewd mover in her own right, who helps Effie eventually to find freedom from her isolated prison. And Derek Jacobi pops up in a lovely cameo as Effie’s legal adviser.

Such is the standard of the cast and production around them, the fact that Effie (Dakota Fanning) and Millais (Tom Sturridge) are completely underpowered is almost by the by. If only someone had called up Holliday Grainger [the Baroness in Anna Karenina], whose face I kept imagining over Fanning’s.

Fanning is a charming American actress, but judging by this, is too weighed down by having to do a (very good) English accent to give her character any heft. She does manage two levels of emotion: Effie’s story is strong enough to get past this, but with different leads, this could have been a five-star picture.

However, it is a fantastic showcase for Wise, who gives the performance of a lifetime.