THIS WEEK’S FILM TO AVOID...

On his wedding night, eminent Victorian art critic John Ruskin was apparently so disgusted by his wife’s pubic hair (sculpture and painting had led him to believe women were hairless), he fled the room and never consummated their marriage. It’s a scandal that’s been gossiped about for some 150 years. Here we get his teenage wife’s side of the story.

Effie (Dakota Fanning, with a fragile English accent) was only a child when she met Ruskin (Greg Wise). All very Lewis Carroll. Ruskin wrote Effie a fairy tale, then a few years later married her, taking his young bride to live with his overbearing parents. Enter Julie Walters as a kind of monstrous Mrs Weasley: a smothering mama who still adores bathing her middleaged son. Understandably, Effie feels stifled and stunted. ‘What am I to do?’ she bleats. The answer is mope about. A lot.

Emma Thompson (above left, with Fanning) penned this handsome yet turgid period drama, so it’s no surprise to find she’s also the liveliest spark in it. She appears, all too briefly, as Effie’s saviour, Lady Eastlake, but there’s no rescuing this dreary, undramatic experience.

It all looks lovely – it’s hard to shoot Venice, the Highlands or, indeed, Tom Sturridge (who eventually appears as Effie’s artist love interest) badly – but as feminist biopics go, it’s almost perversely uninspiring. We learn little of Effie’s inner life and talents – perhaps understandably given she’s clinically depressed – but it’s not helped by Richard Laxton’s unilluminating direction. All the while, a support cast of, presumably, Thompson’s pals – Derek Jacobi, James Fox – is woefully underused.

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