“Effie Gray” is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). (She calls the Renaissance “a golden age of depilation.”) The reasons behind the depilated woman were as varied then as they are today and, predictably, partly turned on the control of the female body, which of course tends to be less furred and frightening when very young. In a wonderful blog post on Renaissance art, the female body and pubic hair, a British scholar, Jill Burke, chimes in on the discussion of Ruskin’s marriage, writing that as a Victorian immersed in the Italian Renaissance art, he might have expected women to be completely hairless. You can guess the rest by the shared looks and strolls, which are nice but find the filmmakers easing up on the more complicated truths of Ruskin and Gray’s life and times, especially in respect to the famous friendships that some 19th-century British men maintained with girls. Euphemia Chalmers Gray, born in 1828, was the daughter of George Gray, a Writer to the Signet, of Bowerswell, Perth. She perks up with the introduction of John Everett Millais (Tom Sturridge), a Pre-Raphaelite who painted a dubiously heroic plein-air portrait of Ruskin. Effie smiles, frolics, dances and pants a bit, including on a Venice trip during which Ruskin worked on “ The Stones of Venice,” only to quickly fade. Fanning to show what a bright light Effie was before the marriage dampened her. And because the movie opens shortly before the Ruskins wed, there’s little chance for Ms. Wise gives good sneer, but his character is too hollow and underdeveloped, with little evidence of the intellectual heft that made him, well, John Ruskin. Married at nineteen to John Ruskin, the leading art critic of the time, she found herself trapped in a loveless, unconsummated union after Ruskin rejected her on their wedding night. Cinched to suffocate its wearer, the dress. It’s a lamentable if not especially engrossing story, part wronged-woman narrative, part marital horror movie. Effie Millais, ne Gray (18281897) 1873 John Everett Millais (18291896) Perth & Kinross Council Another portrait of Effie by Millais, painted 20 years after the first, perhaps shows a more realistic vision of the Effie he must have known. Effie Gray, a beautiful and intelligent young socialite, rattled the foundations of England's Victorian age. circa 1873 20 Effie Gray RM 2HFG540 Design for a Gothic Arch with the Artist and Effie Ruskin Embracing (recto) Design for a Gothic Arch with Effie as an Angel (verso), 1853. Wrapped in England’s gossamer fogs and framed by stiff Victorian facades, period-drama and biopic, Effie Gray, fits like a too tight ball gown. Effie tries her desperate best night after night, year after year.
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