BRIGHT STAR

Year: 2009
USA: Apparition
UK: Pathe Distribution
Cast: Ben Whishaw, Abbie Cornish, Thomas Sangster, Paul Schneider, Samuel Barnett, Kerry Fox, Roger Ashton-Griffiths, Samuel Roukin, Antonia Campbell-Hughes, Sebastian Armesto, Olly Alexander, Jonathan Aris, Adrian Schiller, Alfred Harmsworth, Joyia Fitch, Sam Gaukroger, Gerard Monaco
Director: Jane Campion
Countries: UK / Australia / France
USA & UK: 119 mins
USA Rated: PG for thematic elements, some sensuality, brief language and incidental smoking
UK Certificate: PG contains infrequent mild sex references and one suicide reference
USA Release Date: 18 September 2009 (Limited Release)
UK Release Date: 6 November 2009

Synopsis

London 1818: a secret love affair begins between 23 year-old English poet, John Keats (Ben Whishaw), and the girl next door, Fanny Brawne (Abbie Cornish), an outspoken student of fashion. This unlikely pair started at odds; he thinking her a stylish minx, she unimpressed by literature in general. It was the illness of Keats's younger brother that drew them together. Keats was touched by Fanny's efforts to help and agreed to teach her poetry.

By the time Fanny's alarmed mother (Kerry Fox) and Keats's best friend Charles Armitage Brown (Paul Schneider) realised their attachment, the relationship had an unstoppable momentum. Intensely and helplessly absorbed in each other, the young lovers were swept into powerful new sensations, "I have the feeling as if I were dissolving", Keats wrote to her. Together they rode a wave of romantic obsession that deepened as their troubles mounted. Only Keats's illness proved insurmountable.