Bright Star on La Croisette

This year's film festival in Cannes has seen the film Bright Star by director Jane Campion become a favourite for the coveted Palme d'Or award. Campion first won this prestigious award sixteen years ago for her film The Piano making her the only woman to have ever done so. Bright Star is a period love story between the poet John Keats and his neighbour Fanny Brawne, as seen through her eyes.

Le Figaro has reviewed the film glowingly, 

"Every shot in Bright Star has the purity of a painting. Each scene is a lesson in love and literature. This is a film of small powerful gestures, where even a brush of the hands burns with passion." 

I recently re-watched The Piano starring Holly Hunter and Harvey Keitel and would have to say that I found it even more moving and evocative than my first viewing. Campion's attention to detail, her eye for beauty and her intuitiveness when it comes to the human condition make this particular love story unforgettable. I would also count the soundtrack from this movie as one of my all time favourites.

My fingers are crossed that Bright Star wins the Palme d' Or, not only because I want to support my fellow antipodeans but also because I am an incurable romantic.

Bright Star, Would I Were Stedfast by John Keats 1819

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, 

Pillowed 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 in death. 

Winner or not - I will be one of the first in line to see this film, xv.