New Zealand director Jane Campion's new film Bright Star is shaping up to be her second Cannes prize-winner. Helen Barlow reports
As the days go by and the films stack up in the Cannes competition, Jane Campion's Bright Star is still shining strong. Only one film, Jacques Audiard's A Prophet, a harrowing drama set in the French prison system, is slightly ahead in the daily Screen magazine's critics poll.
Given the official jury is headed by a woman, Isabelle Huppert, and includes the fiery Robin Wright Penn and Asia Argento, Campion may have an advantage to take away a major prize on the weekend - maybe even the Palme d'Or as she did 16 years ago when she became the first woman to take out the hallowed prize with The Piano.
The French critics particularly love Bright Star, which follows the three-year love affair between the 19th century romantic poet John Keats and his Hampstead neighbour Fanny Brawne. The widely distributed free Metro calls the film a "beautiful poetry lesson", while Michel Ciment of influential magazine Positif was in raptures. "It's Campion's best film since The Piano and puts her back at the top of world cinema," he says. "It's also the first film at that level which has poetry as its centrepiece."
In a crowded press conference, where Campion sat together with the film's stars, Australia's Abbie Cornish and Britain's Ben Whishaw, she explained that her film was more a love story and an homage to John Keats' poetry, than it was a period film.
Certainly it was a clever conceit to tell her story through the eyes of Brawne, who inspired many of his love poems, before his premature death at the age of 25. Australian actress Cornish has exceeded expectations by delivering a nuanced, unshowy performance, one which may herald her breakthrough as a major international star.
The Hollywood Reporter notes how she "winningly plays the beautiful seamstress Fanny, whose passion is constrained only by the rigorous mores of the times."
"I was terrified about finding Fanny's voice as she was known for her wit," notes Cornish. "I read all the material I could, including the love letters. In the end I channelled her spirit and made the character my own."
Campion collaborator Janet Patterson does a stellar job of devising not only the film's costumes but also the sets, which are significantly pared down for an historical film.
Campion was in Cannes with her teenage daughter Alice, who stood at the side of the pressroom blushing as her mother singled her out as the reason for her five-year absence from filmmaking. Kerry Fox, who plays Brawne's mother, flew over from London to walk up the red carpet with her An Angel at My Table director, while Cornish attended with her boyfriend Ryan Philippe. Even if the pair avoided being photographed together, Philippe cheered his partner from the sidelines before walking the red carpet alone.
As for Bright Star's future in the marketplace, Screen says the film should shine as an irresistible quality attraction, since Campion tells the story of the love affair "with a classical poise, exquisite craftsmanship and a piercing tenderness."
Sydney-based Campion says she'd love to return to New Zealand to make a contemporary film. "It's one of my plans. I'm talking to Graeme Mason [from the New Zealand Film Commission] about it and I'm writing something at the moment."
While she has another project to shoot in Australia beforehand, she'll continue to develop the New Zealand film, Top of The Lake, which comprises three features that interlock draws on the alpine landscape around Glenorchy at the top of Lake Wakatipu.
