Last year, influential British art critic and philosopher John Ruskin briefly featured in Mr. Turner, depicted with a teasing comic touch as dandified and long-winded. He fares even worse in Effie Gray, an Emma Thompson-penned dramatization of his mysterious, unpleasant, and ultimately annulled matrimony with the title character, a teenage girl from Scotland. Their short-lived union remains a rather notorious Victorian-era conversation piece, particularly his motive for never sleeping with his youthful and reportedly beautiful bride. (A popular rumor involves revulsion upon seeing her nude or perhaps menstruating.) The Thompson screenplay, opening with a melancholy fairytale preamble, shapes the historical record into a quietly suspenseful experience almost reminiscent of Rebecca, cinema's greatest tale of post-marital dislocation and intrigue.

Greg Wise eviscerates Ruskin, portraying him as an icy, tightly wound creep pampered and overindulged by his 19th-century helicopter mother, portrayed with scenery-devouring zest by Julie Walters. And Dakota Fanning rises to the challenge of playing Effie (Euphemia), using her downcast eyes and halting movements to illustrate how the toxic domestic situation in which she is ensnared slowly and surely depletes her reserves of hope, joy, and resolve. The film is photographed well, with many of the Gothic and resplendent shots broadly resembling or directly referencing the Pre-Raphaelite style strongly championed by Ruskin. It only falls a tad short in its standard-issue depiction of the heroine's burgeoning relationship with painter John Everett Millais, who would become her second husband. He is capably portrayed by the brooding, extremely photogenic Tom Sturridge, but the neatly optimistic and redemptive dimensions of their bond are never as authentic or riveting as the cruel, tart dynamic she shares with Ruskin and his dysfunctional family.

B+