Effie Gray
Effie Gray2014, Cert 12A, 1h 48m
Directed by Richard Laxton
Starring: Dakota Fanning, Greg Wise, Emma Thompson, Claudia Cardinale, Robbie Coltrane, Julie Walters, Derek Jacobi, Tom Sturridge, David Suchet, James Fox, Russell Tovey.
Doors open 7:00pm, Film 7:30, Supper 9:30pm £6, wine £11/bottle
Last bookings 1200 Sunday 15th March – film £6 pay at the door
Bookings: filmnight@rockbournevillagehall.org.uk or phone: Lucy Matthews 01725 518695
A heady mélange of artists, models, and the biggest sex scandal of the Victorian age are stirred together by writer and national treasure Emma Thompson in this engaging and very entertaining film.
When Euphemia “Effie” Gray married the eminent art historian John Ruskin (Greg Wise) at the age of 19, things were bound to go wrong, especially because, as it was widely rumoured, Ruskin, who had only ever seen nude women depicted in renaissance paintings and marble statuary with their private parts smudged, fled the bedroom, never to return, at the sight of Effie’s bodily hair. Effie (the lovely Dakota Fanning) fell for the pre-Raphaelite painter John Millais (Tom Sturridge) and, egged on by her friend Lady Eastlake (Emma Thompson), after five years of loveless and unconsummated marriage defied Victorian society and sued for divorce. A galaxy of the best British acting talent – Russell Tovey, Robbie Coltrane, Derek Jacobi, James Fox, David Suchet – help to spice the scandal with superb performances in this outstanding film. Some moments still have the power to scandalise even now.
John Crome