Bright Star

Bea says: It's some time since I've seen a film by Jane Campion, and I had loved The Piano, so I was very amenable to Cecil's suggestion that we go along and see this, her latest offering. It was...okay. Neither particularly gripping, nor memorable, it did however pass a couple of hours fairly pleasantly. What seemed to be missing from it was the raw emotion of The Piano, although this was perhaps deliberate as the plot dealt with the English middle classes, rather than New Zealand immigrants.

Bright Star's apparently true story centres on Keats' time living in with a friend and fellow poet (Brown) in the village of Hampstead, near London (how quaint). A family live next door, and soon the eldest daughter of the household is enamoured with Mr Keats - cue much sobbing and some self harm whenever he has to go away. Keats is the archetypal penniless poet, and also rather delicate of constitution - before too long he has consumption and is clearly not long for this world, as those of us who know the Romantic poets knew anyway. He leaves for the improving climate of Rome, but as any visitor to the Spanish Steps knows, he dies there, leaving Fanny Brawn to walk the Heath alone until her own death years later.

Although I found Fanny's character a little tiresome and felt like telling her to pull herself together at times, I did enjoy her dressmaking, and the fabulous costumes, and cinematography, of this costume drama. I am not sure if I was supposed to be, but I wasn't convinced of Keats feelings for Fanny - it seemed he was more in love with the idea of love, rather than with her which fits, I suppose, with the Romantic poets. Cecil and I wondered afterwards if there was a hint of homosexuality in his relationship with the friend he lived with (Mr Brown - best performance in the film, I think).

Not highly recommended, and a sad end, but not a bad DVD film perhaps. It made me want to read a biography of Keats, which is no bad thing I guess.
**1/2

Cecil says: I don't have much to say about this film. Indeed, I don't remember much about it, even though we only saw it about a week ago. It was midday on a Saturday before Christmas, but perhaps the fact that we were the only people in the cinema when the lights went down should have been a clue about its popularity. At first, I was slightly miffed when a third person came in late and ruined our private viewing. But half an hour in, I had an inkling of why everyone was out Christmas shopping instead.

"Bright Star" sounds so optimistic, such a positive-sounding film, after our gloom-fest with the "White Ribbon" a few weeks ago. I had been warned by someone who knows a fair bit about Keats' life that it was likely to be a sad ending, given his early demise, but honestly there was not a lot to be positive about through the whole film.

Relationships not quite fitting; his work not quite selling; his health on a slow but steady downhill path. Yep, gloom and doom again. How do I pick these films?

And now, two weeks later, I am struggling to remember anything about the film. Is that not the worst indictment of a film: that it is utterly forgettable?

*.5