OK, so you marry an arts critic with pushy parents, but start losing your hair - literally - when he freaks out at your bush on your wedding night, preferring hairless statues and classical depictions of the depleted female frame.
Poor Ethie. And you're stuck in his parents' house and have no occupation or influence, while your famous hubby knocks up his next lecture/art critique tome. What's a Victorian girl to do? Find and bed a struggling artist currently commissioned to paint a flattering portrait of your soon to be ex.Obs. The End.
After an hour and forty of lushly photographed Scotland and Venice, plus dark - very dark Victorian interiors - the sense of Effie's suffocation is almost overwhelming. Thank God for Derek Jacobie - playing himself, surely - as the divorce solicitor who shows her a way out. Cut. We don't see Effie's new life, but hope it was better than life with the freak- genius, Ruskin. As for his mum, played repressively by Julie Walter, we pray for bad things to happen to her. Often.
So, its a good screenplay by Emma Thomson, effectively realized - apparently after many legal wrangles which threatened to derail this film project and delayed its release. Made me want to get drunk and find out more about the asexual/repressed Ruskin. In that order!
Poor Ethie. And you're stuck in his parents' house and have no occupation or influence, while your famous hubby knocks up his next lecture/art critique tome. What's a Victorian girl to do? Find and bed a struggling artist currently commissioned to paint a flattering portrait of your soon to be ex.Obs. The End.
After an hour and forty of lushly photographed Scotland and Venice, plus dark - very dark Victorian interiors - the sense of Effie's suffocation is almost overwhelming. Thank God for Derek Jacobie - playing himself, surely - as the divorce solicitor who shows her a way out. Cut. We don't see Effie's new life, but hope it was better than life with the freak- genius, Ruskin. As for his mum, played repressively by Julie Walter, we pray for bad things to happen to her. Often.
So, its a good screenplay by Emma Thomson, effectively realized - apparently after many legal wrangles which threatened to derail this film project and delayed its release. Made me want to get drunk and find out more about the asexual/repressed Ruskin. In that order!