Dir. Jane Campion, UK/ Australia/ France, 2009, 119 mins
Cast: Abbie Cornish, Ben Whishaw, Paul Schneider
Review by Carol Allen
This is the story of the youthful love affair which began in 1818 between the poet John Keats, then aged 23, and 18 year old Fanny Brawne, who lived next door to him in Hampstead and was the inspiration for much of his work, including the poem, which gives the film its title.
When they first meet, Keats (Wishaw) is not overimpressed with Fanny (Cornish), finding her a bit of an airhead, who is interested in fashion but not in poetry. However when his younger brother Tom (Olly Alexander) is taken ill with tuberculosis and dies, he is touched by Fanny's solicitude. He agrees to teach her poetry and they fall in love. Their relationship is opposed by Fanny's mother (Kerry Fox) and Keats's close friend Brown (Schneider) and the lovers are ultimately separated by Keats's illness - he also develops tuberculosis - which necessitates him moving to Italy, where he dies at the age of 25.
A potentially powerful story of tragic love and loss. Campion for her own good reasons has chosen to focus the story on Fanny rather than Keats. However, while casting no reflection on Cornish's performance, the character of Fanny as written and conceived is that of a somewhat dreary and uninteresting young woman. The potentially interesting character is Keats himself and the influence of this relationship on his poetry. Whishaw looks the part and is very good within the limits of the role but he doesn't get the opportunities and the only time we have a chance to really savour and appreciate the effect of the poetry is in his poignant and beautiful reading over the end titles.
The relationship between him and Fanny, although supposedly a passionate one, actually comes over as somewhat pallid. It's difficult to see what it is about her that attracts him. Although he describes her as "a minx", there's no minxiness about her, no fun, mischief or wit and no hidden depths to be revealed. To be fair, she does have some touching moments later on, when she receives his letters from Italy and one does feel sorry for her in the way she's sidelined by Brown, when Keats is taken ill. But her grief at her beloved's death, while again quite moving, feels more like a teenager with a crush on a pop star than a passionate love. She is also, we're told, a young woman with a great interest in fashion, who makes her own clothes. The clothes of this period are very attractive but many of the costumes the actress is given to wear are very unflattering. She looks uncomfortable in them and comes over inappropriately as a bit of a "fashion victim", who has no idea how to dress to make the best of herself.
Fox, once Campion's lead actress in An Angel at My Table , breathes life into the underwritten role of Mrs Brawn, Shneider is strong and appropriately domineering as Keats' possessive friend Brown and Antonia Campbell-Hughes in the small role of a servant girl, who gets pregnant, gives the film a lift with some of the liveliness and passion it would have been good for Fanny to have had.
The look of the film however is brilliant, particularly the cinematography. Virtually every frame is perfect and the composition and lighting really beautiful. Director of photography Greig Fraser is a comparatively new arrival on the feature film scene and judging from this, he's a talent to watch. The settings too are very pleasing, being uncluttered and with a sense of texture, and the characters, with the exception of Fanny, look comfortable in their clothes, as opposed to looking like actors in costume. The idea too of young people in this period taking the same sort of pleasure in nature as nowadays they take in pop music and videos is a very effective one.
Campion's technique of keeping her story telling low key as opposed to Hollywood histrionics is laudable and usually works well. But in this movie she hasn't made Fanny an interesting enough character to hold both the centre of the story and to be believable as the inspiration for great poetry.
|
.jpg)
