艾菲·格蕾 Effie Gray (2014)

A man with strong artistic authenticity who seeks the truth in his paintings married a girl whom he had met in a Scottish house and fell in love with. The marriage turns out to be a failure. The anullment is because of the failure of cosummation.
This dismatch of love and marriage perfectly explains Lacan's theory of sexual relationship. If Ruskin's reason of his abstain from sex that he wants to preserve the virginity of the girl is right, then this is a case of imagina...

A perfectly adequate movie which demystifies a Victorian scandal, where the plot drives towards its inevitable conclusion, showing how the mores of upper-class stiff Victorianism are ultimately as culpable in John Ruskin's frigidity towards his young wife. Ruskin is a nuanced and conflicted character: both pitiable but also possessing a cruel streak.

John Ruskin: Mike Leigh and Emma Thompson have got him all wrong

He was a critic who could out-paint most painters, a great educator who reinvented how we see art. Why has John Ruskin been reduced to a prude and a fop in two new films?

Philip Hoare
Tuesday 7 October 2014 21.00 AEST

On behalf of John Ruskin, I would like to sue Mike Leigh for defamation of character. In Mr Turner, Leigh’s astonishing and sweepingly beautiful new film, the painter’s greatest champion has been traduced. Ruskin, played by Joshua McGuire, is a simpering Blackadderish caricature of an art intellectual: a lisping, red-headed, salon fop.

I almost felt physically sick when I saw him onscreen. Not just because of the extraordinary disconnect between Leigh and Timothy Spall’s brilliant realisation of Turner and the complete misrepresentation of Ruskin, but because this injustice is one that has been going …

期待这部电影的原因有两个，一是因为Emma Thompson再次担当编剧，二是因为对John Ruskin, Effie Gray, John Everett Millais这三个人的关系比较感兴趣。

18岁的苏格兰少女Effie Gray与家族旧识，事业正如日中天的艺术评论家John Ruskin结为夫妻。离开父母的温暖羽翼，苏格兰坦荡开阔的山川高地，Effie跟随夫君来到车水马龙的伦敦。哪想新婚燕尔，丈夫却因厌恶年轻妻子的裸体而摔门逃走。自此之后，她再没有得到一丝夫妻间应有的亲昵与温柔。John Ruskin, 在外界眼里是令人尊敬崇拜的学者，而关起门来却是冷漠，偏执，只懂得埋头工作，对父母惟命是从的“情感缺陷患者”。对爱情心灰意冷，绝望至极的Effie遇到了贵人Lady Eastlake和当时还贫困潦倒，将Ruskin视为伯乐的Millais. 在前者的帮助下，Effie以“未行夫妻之实”为名起诉离婚，并最终成为了Millais的妻子，为其养育了八个孩子。

挑选这样的题材来做电影改编，Emma Thompson 着实很大胆。虽然一直有人提倡将艺术家和其人格分开来对待，但在感情层面上这几乎是不可能的。估计John Ruskin的忠实拥趸在看过这部…