Bright Star (2009), Jane Campion’s version of John Keats and Fanny Brawne’s love affair, invents two romantic courtship picnic scenes. These moments are poignant because we know the romance will end in heartbreak.
The first is a picnic at which they kiss. At another family picnic, Keats and Fanny dance while Fanny’s mother sleeps, and her younger brother and sister watch them intently as if they know something is happening, though they don’t know what. In truth, Keats’s tuberculosis is killing him. He’s about to leave for Rome, hoping to recuperate, but the separation is terminal. It’s a sad, sad picnic.
The picnics take place in Hampstead, where Keats was living with his friend John Brown. Keats tries desperately to write about his love but is invariably distracted. At last, he’s able to compose the sonnet “Bright Star” that begins, “Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art—”
Among his letters, Keats tells his brother George and sister-in-law Georgiana about Fanny Brawne. Keats seems shy to introduce her, but he lets them know that she’s special—beautiful, elegant, and graceful, though argumentative –a “Minx” with a “penchant for acting stylishly.”
See Jane Campion. Bright Star (2009). The screenplay is by Jane Campion; John Keats. “Letter to the George Keats, 18 December 1818.” In Letters of John Keats.
The cast: Ben Whishaw as John Keats; Abbie Cornish as Fanny Brawne