Bright Star

Starring Abbie Cornish, Ben Wishaw. Directed by Jane Campion

A romantic movie about a great Romantic poet had to be ... well, romantic. But Jane Campion's Bright Star, about a love nipped in the bud of its bloom, is not a bodice-ripping Mills and Boon period costume drama but an exquisitely and elegantly crafted bittersweet tale of hushed yearning and pining, simmering frustration and silent laments.

The focus of this film is not on poet John Keats, who died in 1821 at age 25 from tuberculosis, and whose work includes six great odes and the likes of La Belle Dame Sans Merci (And no birds sing), Endymion (A thing of beauty is a joy forever) and the sonnet Bright Star (Would I were steadfast as thou art).

The latter was inspired by young seamstress Fanny Brawne - and she is Campion's central figure, met by Keats in 1818 and with whom he dissolved into love. It is Fanny's wrestling with society's conventions of her time and her growing ardour for Keats, who was penniless and indebted, that is the main storyline.

Ben Whishaw's Keats - who confesses he's confused by women and is gentle, sensitive, dreamy and fragile - is a catalyst who comes and goes, gets sick and eventually dies offstage in rooms overlooking Rome's Spanish Steps.

We see him through Abbie Cornish's Fanny, who's an Austen-type heroine, independent, intelligent and spirited but unsettled by Keats.

Theirs is a tremulous relationship, of circling convergence accompanied by amorous intimations and sighs of longing.

He's Mr Keats to her and she's Miss Brawne to him. Indeed, their relationship is ultimately more muted than moving, with expressions of passion left for letters and poems.

The only sparks come in a romantic triangle involving Fanny, Keats and Charles Brown (Paul Schneider), a boorish Scottish friend and protective patron of Keats, with much antagonistic sparring banter between him and rival Fanny.

Bright Star is an arthouse movie, arguably Campion's best since The Piano.

Its production, performance and direction aspires to, and often achieves, lyricism but at times languidly so. Its story is tender but occasionally slightly tedious.

As an ode to the loves in Keats' life (Miss Brawne and his poetry), it is like Keats' figures on a grecian urn, who cannot kiss but do not grow old.

There is beauty in its truth, but it might leave you strangely unaffected.

- © Fairfax NZ News