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From celebrated director Jane Campion comes a biopic of nineteenth century Romantic poet John Keats, exploring his romance with Miss Fanny Brawne, beginning in 1818.

Director: Jane Campion
Starring: Abbie Cornish, Ben Whishaw, Kerry Fox, Paul Schneider
Running time: 119 mins approx.

Critically acclaimed for her early 90s period drama The Piano, New Zealand filmmaker Jane Campion has created a beautiful and heartbreaking film in her latest effort, Bright Star. Exploring the life of John Keats (Ben Whishaw) and his doomed love affair with Fanny Brawne (Abbie Cornish), the film is beautifully shot – Campion makes excellent use of colours, textures and lighting to a wonderfully romantic effect. One scene in particular in which Fanny reads one Keats’ love letters takes place in a wooded sea of violet-hued bluebells, the bright purples and swathes of green perfectly contrasting each other. Throughout the film Campion uses her pastoral setting very well, utilising the landscape, trees, woods and flowers to create a believable and stunning world for the characters to fall in love in.

And fall in love they surely do. After an initially frosty first meeting, the feisty Fanny Brawne enlists Keats to teach her about poetry and language. At first, Fanny is not much enamoured by the young poet but this feeling changes rapidly after she notices Keats’ anxiety and affection for his brother who lies seriously ill. The two then meet with quickening frequency and find themselves entangled in a passionate love affair that sets the wider community gossiping. However, with Keats’ own health in serious speedy decline, a dark shadow is cast over the lovers’ affair, one that even the strongest love cannot overcome.

The gentle and tragic story of Bright Star is very well directed with the exception of a few scenes which are too languorous – it appears that Campion was aiming to create moods of tension and repressed passion but instead these scenes simply run out of steam.

Consequently the second act is slow and needs more dynamism and drama to keep the film interesting. However, in terms of acting, Bright Star certainly excels. Abbie Cornish is very good as the headstrong Fanny Brawne, simultaneously eliciting sympathy whilst not being an instantly likeable lead heroine. However, as her love for Keats blossoms, so does our fondness for her, to the point that her sorrow in the film’s tragic conclusion is heartbreaking. Cornish’s performance in this particular scene is excellent – Cornish presents Fanny feeling the emotional pain physically and with an arresting intensity.

As Keats himself, Ben Whishaw is haunting, having a suitably poetic quality about him. He is at all times thoroughly convincing as the young poet, being attractive, quiet and possessing a certain beautiful melancholic air. The only problem with Whishaw’s portrayal of Keats is that the character could at times do with some angry passion to measure the tender embraces and pained looks that seem to dominate his relationship with Fanny.

Bright Star is a beautiful, gentle and tragic romance that combines wonderful production design with good storytelling to haunting effect.

Rating: MMMM

Review of sunny, seasonal romantic-comedy, (500) Days of Summer, starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt (‘3rd Rock From The Sun’) and Zooey Deschanel.

Director: Marc Webb
Starring: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Zooey Deschanel, Clark Gregg
Running time: 95 mins

From its breezy, whimsical and original opening titles to its warm-hearted closing moments, ‘anti-romantic comedy’ (500) Days of Summer succeeds in bringing something new to a stale and formulaic genre (see article) – that of the aforementioned rom-com.

Where (500) Days of Summer breaks away from its predecessors is that we are told from the very start that the boy-meets-girl relationship we are about to see is one that does not end with our hero and heroine living happily ever after together. Yet this does not hamper the film as a consequence. In fact, knowing this enhances and colours (for the better) our judgment of Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and Summer’s (Zooey Deschanel) relationship in each section of the narrative.

Like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind before it, (500) Days of Summer presents the trajectory of a couple’s relationship from start to finish out of chronological order, from day 1 to day 500 – the number

of which is presented by brief intertitles throughout the film – a technique which often makes for interesting and intriguing drama and does so very successfully here. And again, similar to Eternal Sunshine, the film is told from the man’s perspective, a plot device fundamentally crucial to the film’s premise but one which is fresh and original; one of the failings of contemporary rom-coms is that the overwhelming majority are based on female perspectives and hackneyed ones at that.

In terms of acting, the two leads are very good and always utterly convincing as the mostly endearing and sympathetic characters they portray. Joseph Gordon-Levitt in particular should be singled out for plaudits, as his co-star Zooey Deschanel seems to be merely displaying an amalgam of her assorted ‘kooky female’ roles in her performance as the eponymous Summer. Having said this, Deschanel maintains a balance between charming and aloof which at the climax of the film, seems to be a fair summation of Tom’s feelings for her. It may just be unfortunate that Deschanel keeps being offered this kind of alternative yet cute character – she is in real danger of being typecast.

Along with great acting and a fresh premise, where the film also charms is in its design (not that the film prioritises style over its substance) and tone. Where other films exert their American-ness, (500) Days of Summer has more of a European feel: Tom and Summer take a trip to Ikea, not Pottery Barn; Tom listens to melancholic British indie rock music; the movies that display Tom’s misery are burlesques on the films of the Nouvelle Vague.

(500) Days of Summer is a quirky, original and well written ‘anti’ romantic-comedy that ends on a warm high note despite the guy not getting his summery girl.

Rating: MMMM