A Woman's Happiness in Effie Gray (2014)

Recently on my YouTube channel (ACPicks) I posted two short videos from the biographical drama Effie Gray (2014), a movie I found enjoyable, to illustrate some things as I have done for other movies. NBC Universal had these videos blocked, which is unfortunate because they could have introduced the film to new audiences and lifted the spirits of women who would not otherwise have access to it. Effie Gray has much to offer female viewers, over and above the female protagonist, the other significant female characters, the numerous exchanges between females and the assertive women. One of its greatest strengths is its focus on a woman's happiness. Indeed, it centres on one woman's unhappiness in her marriage and her friends' efforts to help her. Placing so much importance on a woman's happiness/unhappiness in marriage is unusual in film. And so refreshing. It is much more common in film for terrible things to happen to women. There are many uncommon inclusions here, one of my favourite being the intergenerational congeniality between females, something we have come to count on in screenplays by Emma Thompson. Here's to hoping Effie Gray will encourage other filmmakers to value women's happiness a little higher.    
     
​© 2019 Alline Cormier