Dakota Fanning ::"Effie" Role

It was a love triangle that shocked Victorian England ,a tale of passion and duty, tradition and freedom seething beneath corsets and waistcoats. Now it’s coming back to life on screen, with a 21st-century behind-the-scenes drama thrown in. “Effie,’’ which features 17-year-old Dakota Fanning in one of her first adult roles, tells the story of the disastrous marriage between 19th-century art critic John Ruskin and his young bride Effie Gray.
It was a train wreck of a union, a collision of opposites that ended after Effie fell truly, madly, scandalously in love with wild-eyed young artist John Everett Millais. “It’s the ultimate bad marriage,’’ said Emma Thompson, the Academy Award winning actress and writer behind “Effie’’`s screenplay. She said she was drawn to the story by its “archetypal quality.’’ “It happens to be a costume drama, but you could be doing a story with this kind of complexity and oddness in any period,’’ Thompson said on the set of “Effie’’ at West Wycombe House, an exuberantly ornate 18th-century mansion in the Chiltern Hills northwest of London. She’s not alone in seeing the story’s potential. Two writers have come forward to accuse Thompson of copying their work, claims she and her producers deny.
 Playwright Gregory Murphy alleges similarities with his play and screenplay “The Countess.’’ He has claimed that “Effie’’ is “distinctly related to my own screenplay in its timeframe, character development, structure and tone.’’ American writer Eve Pomerance maintains the script has passages similar to her own unproduced screenplay, “The Secret Trials of Effie Gray.’’ “Effie’’ producer Donald Rosenfeld accuses Pomerance and Murphy of “fortune hunting,’’ and has hit back with lawsuits in a U.S. court against both writers, seeking a declaration by a judge that there are no copyright issues involved.’’ “We’ve never had any contact with these people,’’ he said.

“They did not have anything to do with the movie.’’ Thompson happily admits she is not the first writer to tell Effie’s tale. There have been several film, television and stage versions, and Keira Knightley is reportedly in talks to play Effie in another movie, “Untouched.’’ “That always happens,’’ Thompson said, sipping a mug of tea between takes. “It’s a zeitgeist thing. There hadn’t been a Jane Austen movie for 30 years when we started to prep `Sense and Sensibility’’’ — the 1995 film for which she won a screenwriting Oscar. “Suddenly there were like 14 on the go.’’

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