tMF | The Movie-Fanatic

Jane Campion has won the Palme d’Or via The Piano. This time, she is up for the award once again via her latest film, Bright Star. Starring two of today's most exciting young actors- Abbie Cornish and Ben Whishaw, the film is a drama based on the three-year romance between 19th century poet John Keats and Fanny Brawne, which was cut short by Keats' untimely death at age 25. Commented the Huffington Post:

Campion, the only woman to win the top prize in the 62-year history of the Cannes Film Festival, returned to the world's premier cinema fest with "Bright Star," spinning the brief but passionate romance between Keats and the love of his short life, girl-next-door Fanny Brawne.The film -- one of 20 competing for the festival's Palme d'Or, the award Campion previously won for 1993's "The Piano" [ read more ]

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Early reviews are quite good for the film, and here is one sampling:

A good deal warmer than Campion’s other period heart-wringer The Portrait Of A Lady, Bright Star does nothing new (if it wasn’t based of fact, it would be accused of adhering too closely to formula) but it does it very well, displaying real craft and benefiting from terrific performances. Cornish and Whishaw here cement their reputations as two of the best young actors around, while Paul Schneider threatens to steal the movie as Keats’ friend and provider Brown – possessive, spiteful and a terrible snob. [ read more ]

I've seen Abbie Cornish in Candy together with the late Heath Ledger, where she plays a drug addict. It was a powerful and memorable performance for the Australian actress. She was also quite good in the war drama Stop/Loss, but her role in this film has been regarded by many film observers to be her best so far.

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Of course, Ben Whishaw has been making waves since his role in Perfume: The Story of a Murderer.

Says TimeOutLondon:

Whishaw is fast becoming the go-to actor for troubled young artistic types (having tackled Hamlet, the inspired murderer of ‘Perfume’ and a mix of Rimbaud and Dylan in Todd Hayne’s ‘I’m Not There’) and here he and Campion conspire to play Keats with a breezy immediacy in the few years before his death at the age of 25 from tubercolis. They avoid loading the film with the huge weight of his later reputation. This is not so much a biopic - with all its accompanying heavy narrative machinery – than a focused portrait of the poet at a particular time when he was enjoying two crucial friendships, one with his friend Charles Armitage Brown and the other with his unofficial fiancee Brawne, who he was was not able to marry because of his poverty. [ read more ]

Says the Guardian:

Ben Whishaw plays Keats with a welcome restraint and Abbie Cornish is excellent as Fanny, the young woman from a neighbouring family in what, in 1818, is the wild north London countryside. It is to be the scene of a tragic pastoral. As her affection for Keats deepens, she finds herself in a love duel with Keats's friend and fellow poet: a Scot by the name of Mr Brown – a man dressed by Campion (a little excessively) in tartan trews and matching waistcoat, and so abrupt, maladroit, gloweringly passionate and resentful that his first name might as well be Gordon. He is played, with a reasonable Scottish accent, by the American actor Paul Schneider; Whishaw himself softens Keats's legendary cockney. [ read more ]

I've been looking forward (quite impatiently) about the release of two period films- Campion's Bright Star and Niki Caro's The Vintner's Luck. It's quite a coincidence, really, that both films were made by two women and they are both from New Zealand! Caro's period piece also stars two of today's most talented young actors- Gaspard Ulliel and Jeremie Renier.

2009 is definitely an exciting year for young actors!