Jane Campion's Bright Star

Jane Campion's Bright Star created quite a stir at it's premiere at Cannes. This is one for awards season, and it's so great to have a new romance by director Jane Campion to look forward to.

One of the highlights of the weekend at the Cannes Film Festival was the premiere of Jane Campion’s Bright Star, centering on the 3-year romance, from 1818-1821, between poet John Keats and Fanny Brawne. Ben Whishaw stars as Keats, Abbie Cornish as his paramour Fanny, and Thomas Sangster as her brother Samuel.

Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art--
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors--
No--yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever--or else swoon to death.

--- John Keats