Neither biopic nor a straightforward period film, Jane Campion’s Bright Star is better described as a ballad on love, creation and daily life in middle class Regency England. Inspired by Andrew Motion’s biography of the Romantic poet John Keats, Campion tells the story of Keats’ love affair with his neighbour, Fanny Brawne. Beginning in 1818, the film charts their relationship, from first meeting to Keats’ untimely death in Rome, two years later. This time was also one of the most creatively productive periods of Keats’ brief life during which he wrote many of his best known poems, include the film’s namesake, dedicated to Fanny, ‘Bright Star’.

However, Bright Star is not really a film about Keats. Rather it is about Fanny Brawne, the woman who inspired Keats’ love and his poetry, but a woman who was also creative, determined and inspired in her own right. Played by Abbie Cornish in a luminous and sensuous performance, it is through Fanny’s eyes that we see Keats and it is her love story that we experience. From the opening close-up of a needle moving through fabric, Campion draws us into Fanny’s world and invites us to experience it along with her, intimately, sensually, immediately.

Fanny first meets Keats while on a visit to the home of his friend, and unofficial patron Charles Brown (Paul Schneider). Delicate and disheveled, a yet-to-be-appreciated genius, Keats, in a riveting performance by Ben Whishaw, is as mercurial, willful and intense as tradition and cliché would have it. Suspicious of women in general, Keats at first sees Fanny as little more than a seductive and amusing distraction. Calling her ‘minx’, he is quick to dismiss her as frivolous and superficial. Her attachment to fashion, her flirtatious nature and her liking for wit, confirm his initial conclusions.

Fanny (Abbie Cornish), meanwhile, is equally suspicious as well as generally unimpressed by poetry. A talented seamstress, and a dedicated follower of fashion, Fanny takes great pride in her work and will not be patronised by either Keats or Brown. It is her art form and speaks volumes about her. From the opening scene the film clearly sets out to create an equality of sorts between Fanny’s sewing and Keats’ poetry: for both it is an essential and meaningful form of creation and self-expression. Exuberant and determined, Fanny’s clothes clearly distinguish her and she pointedly informs the poets that her work, at least, is capable of earning her money.
This contrary beginning nonetheless initiates an attraction which intensifies quickly. It is Fanny’s sincere concern for Keats’ brother’s health, having lost her own father to illness she genuinely empathises with Keats’ situation, that brings them closer. This shared experience creates an affinity between the two which is strengthened when Fanny discovers value in Keats’ poetry. After providing him with a frank appraisal of his work, Fanny requests poetry lessons to deepen her understanding and appreciation. Her excitement and his interest aroused, the rapport between the two deepens and they begin to fall headlong into an ardent infatuation.

Through a series of episodes, or verses, Campion tells the story of this affair. The film is in no rush here and takes its time to show their shared passion and interweave it with the changing seasons and the many ordinary rituals of everyday life. It is through these episodes, walks on the heath and poetry recitations, that their romance builds from rapturous infatuation to a devoted and mature love. This episodic quality works wonderfully to infuse the well-worn romantic progression with a startling freshness and originality. A supremely romantic film without ever lapsing into a swooning cliché, Campion immerses her audience into a series of ravishingly sensual experiences that consistently feel novel and authentic while eliciting in the audience the feeling of love in all its heady, intoxicating drama.

Prevented by Keats’ lack of income and poor prospects from legitimising their relationship in marriage, the lovers’ affair is riven with tension. Torn between ardent intimacy and necessary restraint, tantalising proximity and agonising distance, professional ambition and personal passion, Fanny and Keats must constantly find ways of reconciling the idealism of their love with the realities of the world they live in. It is this grounding, this constant connection to reality, that ensures the film’s many rapturous moments do not overburden it or descend into sentimental indulgence.

Family and friends, work and the necessity to make a living, weather and health are facts of existence which continually return the lovers to a more prosaic existence. Fanny’s family keep her grounded - she is permanently accompanied by her younger brother and sister - Samuel (Thomas Sangster) and the captivating Toots (Edie Martin) - and Fanny’s mother, Mrs Brawne (Kerry Fox), while loving and supportive, is very concerned over her daughter’s unsuitable choice in love and forces her to reflect on the realities of her situation. Brown performs the same role for Keats. Belligerent and abrasive, he is the source of much of the film’s humour and vitality and is the perfect antidote to Keats’ wispy romanticism.

As lush, absorbing and sensuous as love itself, Bright Star’s episodic structure and attention to detail, plunge us into Fanny and Keats’ world and their heady romance. Never stilted or diminished by the distance of the past, the film offers us an intimate access to the time it portrays and gives this story a timeless quality, an immediacy that speaks easily across the distance of history. This is an experiential film, a film to be lived through imaginatively and sensually. Campion wants us to feel with the characters, not analyse them or assess them. As Keats tells Fanny when attempting to explain poetry to her: “The point of diving in a lake is not immediately to swim to the shore; it’s to be in the lake, to luxuriate in the sensation of water.” And this is precisely what Campion is seeking to create for her audience, too.

Told with Campion’s distinctive and inimitable visual style and with the incomparable contributions of cinematographer Greig Fraser and costume and production designer Janet Patterson, Bright Star is both a film of transcendent beauty and an exquisite portrait of a woman in love.

Review by Kate Ravenscroft

Director: Jane Campion
Screenwriter: Jane Campion
Cast: Abbie Cornish, Ben Whishaw, Kerry Fox, Paul Schneider, Thomas Sangster, Samuel Barnett, Antonia Campbell-Hughes, Edie Martin, Olly Alexander