Abbie Cornish, Ben Whishaw, Paul Schneider, Kerry Fox
Running time: 119 mins
Rating: ★★★

POETS can be a pain. All that furrowed brow angst and emotional turmoil. Romantic ones are even worse. Look at John Keats. Or rather, listen to him as he writes a love poem, Bright Star, for his 18-year-old next door neighbour Fanny Brawne.

Some may have more patience than me with this elegant, if slow romantic drama from writer and director Jane Campion, who made the awardwinning drama The Piano. I just felt like giving everyone a good kick up the bum and telling them to get a move on.

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Campion fell in love with the story while reading a biography of Keats.

She found it tender and tragic, a true life Romeo and Juliet.

Ben Whishaw is a bundle of nerves as the poet Keats, penning love letters to the eldest daughter of the Brawne family living next door in Hampstead in the early 1800s. Illness sent him abroad to a warmer climate where he died aged 25, before he made his name as a poet. His final poem was called simply, To Fanny.

Abbie Cornish is the best thing in the movie as Fanny. Much is made of her dressmaking skills and eye for a fashionable outfit. She handles not only the accent – she’s Australian doing English – but actually makes us realise why Keats might have been interested in flouting convention to get to know this woman.