Though the film’s dim, artfully mildewed shooting style - even Venice, in Gray’s constricted world, is practically as dank as the Highlands - supports this more intimate focus, Laxton and editor Kate Williams do little to concentrate the material, reinscribing established settings and character dynamics to stultifying effect. Her very private personal breakdown is of more interest to the filmmakers than the landmark annulment case that ultimately dissolved her marriage or her happier subsequent romance with Millais, both of which might seem more traditional points of dramatic emphasis. The elements are therefore in place for a lurid slab of corseted soap opera, though Thompson and TV-schooled helmer Laxton (who has since directed “Burton and Taylor” for the BBC) largely eschew melodrama in favor of chaste, chamber-style character study, with Gray’s physical and mental deterioration methodically dramatized by incremental degrees. This abnormal physical neglect, combined with largely tacit psychological abuse, drives Gray conveniently into the brawnily sympathetic arms of Ruskin’s young protege, painter John Everett Millais (Tom Sturridge). We learn eventually that it’s not any kind of sexual impulse: Ruskin could not once bring himself to touch his wife over the course of their six-year marriage. Bates) disapproves of the match from the get-go, it’s not obvious to viewers what motivates this union between cosseted Englishman and grounded Scotswoman. Given that his viciously curt mother (played by Julie Walters as a kind of unholy hybrid of Mrs. Infantilized in a very different way from his 19-year-old wife, he never seems an appropriate suitor for her at any stage of their relationship.
That Ruskin is himself presented as something of a man-boy, still helplessly subservient to his domineering parents, is a character detail made even less palatable by Wise’s middle-aged countenance. Wise’s ostensible miscasting has the effect of making Gray’s position all the more vulnerable, virtually that of a child amid hostile elders. Furthermore, the real-life Ruskin was only nine years older than his bride he’s played here by Thompson’s husband, Greg Wise, who is 28 years Fanning’s senior. Turner, features in both films in very different guises: A precocious prig in Leigh’s film, he’s imagined by Thompson as a more reserved, coldly passive-aggressive figure. Turner,” in which disenfranchised women also suffer at the inattentive hands of Victorian art-scene titans. If nothing else, “Effie Gray” would merit appraisal as a fortuitously timed companion piece to Mike Leigh’s soon-to-be-released “Mr.
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