Movie Review: Bright Star

Bright Star (2009) 

Directed by Jane Campion 

Written by Jane Campion

Starring Abbie Cornish, Ben Whishaw, Kerry Fox, Thomas Sangster, Paul Schneider

Release Date September 16th, 2009 

Published November 15th, 2009

What does it tell you about me when I say that Keats is my favorite poet? That I am a pretentious prick who still reads poetry? Maybe. That I have taken and passed High School lit classes? Maybe. Mostly, however, it should tell you that I am a sucker for romantic longings unfulfilled. Jane Campion's Bright Star captures those longings by turning Keats into a character and his poems a Greek chorus to the romance that inspired him.

In Bright Star Abby Cornish stars as Fanny Brawne a 19 year old with a love of stitching unusual frocks and no interest in poetry. No interest until she meets John Keats (Ben Whishaw) a seemingly failed poet who, though loved by his fellow artists, has not sold enough poetry to pay the bills.

Keats is Fanny's neighbor, living on the estate of his friend and patron Charles Browne (Paul Schneider). The affair between Fanny and Keats is one of those forbidden 18th century romances where the girl is only allowed to marry a man of means and he is but a poor poet. We've seen this story a few times. It's a little different however with the wondrous words of Keats accompanying it.

Jane Campion directs Bright Star with a stark eye, muted colors and quiet tones. It's an approach that brings the restrictions of the day to the forefront, as if the very environment itself were holding back young love. There are moments of brief color and life such as a scene where Fanny lies in a field of purple flowers or one in which she and her much younger sister have filled their bedroom with butterflies, but these scenes are brief, much like the happy moments of Fanny and Keats' love affair.

The educated are aware that Keats died young, only 25. He and Fanny Brawne, his real life neighbor, love and muse, had only two years together before tuberculosis forced Keats to abandon England for the warmer climes of Naples. The film plays a pair of moving scenes around Keats' illness and his departure. One has Keats performing his poem Bright Star, written about Fanny Brawne, as the two lay together for the last time.

The other scene is their very brief goodbye, Keats boards a carriage as Fanny turns her back and walks away without a word. It's a modest, brief scene but it captures the immature romance in unexpected ways. Brawne was only 19 when she met and fell in love with Keats and Abby Cornish well captures the dramatic circumstances of a love that young.

Keep an eye on Paul Schneider as John Browne as early on he will have many in the audience clawing their eyes wishing he would go away. His redemption in the end comes in the form of a moving, angry confession that is arguably the finest moment in a film filled with great moments.

Bright Star is not a perfect film, there are moments when Fanny's immaturity is overstated to an irritating degree and Whishaw can tend too far toward cheap melodrama in a few scenes, but for the most part Director Jane Campion keeps everything on track.

Focusing the story on Fanny and not Keats frees Director Campion from having to film his words and inspiration and instead she gets to feature them. Stay for the credits and a full reading of Keats' Ode to a Nightingale. That alone is nearly enough to recommend Bright Star.

Movie Review In the Cut

In the Cut (2003)

Directed by Jane Campion

Written by Jane Campion, Susanna Moore

Starring Meg Ryan, Mark Ruffalo, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Kevin Bacon 

Release Date October 31st, 2003 

Published October 30th, 2003 

Meg Ryan is at a serious career crossroads. She can no longer get by on her kewpie-doll romantic comedy roles (she's been replaced in those roles by Kate Hudson). She is now desperate to redefine herself in a manner that is appropriate to her age (42! Looks not a day over 30) and fading star power. In The Cut is the first attempt to change people's perception and while she delivers a fine performance, the film that surrounds her is an insultingly stupid, cop movie cliché.

In The Cut stars Ryan as Frannie, a creative writing teacher with an affinity for slang terms. She is planning a book about the subject with help from one of her students, a charismatic young black kid named Cornelius (Sharrief Pugh). The kid has an obvious crush on his teacher and there is the slightest bit of sexual tension between them. When the two meet up at a bar to trade new slang terms, Frannie witnesses a man being serviced by a woman in the bathroom. That woman is later found dead behind Frannie's apartment.

The officer investigating the case is Detective Malloy (Mark Ruffalo) who shows an immediate attraction to Frannie despite her frigid treatment of him in their first meeting. As he investigates the murder, which is linked to a series of murders by a serial killer, Malloy flirts terribly with Frannie and she relents to date him even though he persists with questions about the murder while on the date. Malloy is also quite blunt in his intentions about having Frannie in bed, telling her on the first date that he will fuck her in any way she wants.

Like most women, Frannie can't resist this guy who is obviously bad for her, so bad in fact that she begins to suspect him of the murders and still dates him and beds him. Her suspicions go back to the mystery man in the bar bathroom who's face she didn't see but who's odd wrist tattoo she does remember.

The other people in Frannie's life are her slutty sister Pauline (played with unending skill by Jennifer Jason Leigh), who suggests that Frannie go out with the cop if only to have sex with him. There is also Frannie's ex-boyfriend John (played by the uncredited Kevin Bacon), a mentally unbalanced med student who has taken to stalking her since she dumped him.

Each of the men in the film, including Malloy's partner Detective Rodriguez (Nick Damici), become suspects in the serial killings while female characters line up to be victims. Whether that is meant as an overt statement or not we are left to wonder. What is clear is that we have seen this movie before in a number of straight to video and late night HBO movies. Woman falls in love with a man who may be a killer while other characters act just shady enough to be suspect as well. Then the heroine goes out of her way to blindly place herself in danger in service of the idiot plot.

This is one tired old cliché and one that director Jane Campion should be ashamed to reuse. Campion is too skilled a writer and director for such an awfully conventional thriller plot. Based on a novel by Susanna Moore, who also helped in the adaptation, the only innovation Campion brings to this series of thriller clichés is her arty, pretentious, handheld camera style. Campion's camera bounces around in cars, fades in and out of focus and lends a gauzy haze to nearly every scene and it is eye-catching and quite well conceived. However the stylishness is entirely wasted on this idiot plot.

Of course what everyone is wondering about In The Cut is, how does Meg Ryan look naked? She looks terrific. Unfortunately, as Campion builds the sexual tension in every scene she forgets to make the sex in any way important to the plot. The sex scene between Meg and Mark Ruffalo is one of a number of well-acted scenes by these two excellent actors but the dumb, stupid, idiot plot, undermines both.

Anyone remember the Denzel Washington movie The Bone Collector? Remember how they chose that film’s serial killer by pulling a cast member's name out of a hat (I think that is how they did that). In The Cut does exactly the same thing. The film seems to choose its serial killer randomly and completely outside of the plot and established characters. This forces Ryan into one forced scene of stupidity after another before finally ending with a quiet thud.

It's doubtful that so much talent and skill has gone into making such an awful film. In The Cut is well crafted and well acted but the story is so stupid that you hate it even more than if it had been a complete disaster.