Review of Bright Star (2009) by Tibor B — 08 Jun 2010

Jane Campion delivers a striking period romance here, with the love affair between a young mildly successful poet, John Keats, and Fanny Brawne, a young, rather stoic fashionista. In the middle are Mr Brown, his brash but adoring best friend and Brawne's supportive but rather conservative family. Campion creates a living breathing world full of detail, and uses some nicely atmospheric cinematography and pastelle palette which lingers on the natural world, so often a feature of Keats' poetry. Cornish, Whishaw and Schneider are all excellent creating layered characters just that little bit offbeat from the genre norms.

Places where the film does stumble is in its initial orientation of how Keats and Brawne come to meet, and the fact that the love affair lasted three years doesn't come across. The seasons do change but not to such a great extent, leaving the romance seeming more like a fairly short breathless whirlwind infatuation than anything much more drawn out and deep. Having said that Cornish excells at portraying the excitement and also deep insecurity of an obsessive manifestation of love and her grief at the inevitable outcome does tug at the heartstrings.