Abbie Cornish, Ben Whishaw, Paul Schneider, Kerry Fox, Thomas Sangster
The Basics: As everyone knows, poetry is a drag and the people who write poetry are way too often the types you'd probably most enjoy punching in the face (exceptions: nutjob celebrity books of poetry meant to be read aloud with friends in the room--you'll get my copy of Suzanne Somers's Touch Me when you pry it from my cold, dead hands). So this movie about tuberculosis-rock-star John Keats and the burning, doomed love affair he had with a wild thing named Fanny Brawne had two strikes against it, namely that it's full of pretty young actors reciting 19th century Romantic poetry and that if you paid attention for three seconds in English Lit you already know the guy died coughing up his own blood at age 25.
What's the Deal: So no third strike, I'm happy to report. Director Jane Campion (The Piano), finally having recovered from the critical and box-office beating she took for her underrated bummer of a Meg Ryan movie, In The Cut, is back with some unabashed love. Now, because it's Jane Campion, it still ends in tears (see "coughing up his own blood" thing above) and features a female protagonist whose love affair with Keats is almost as important to her as the love affair she has with her own high self-esteem. In fact, this movie is less about John Keats than it is the woman who easily grabbed his heart by tossing indifferent insults his way right from the start. Best of all, Campion shows restraint. She likes intelligent people with ideas who talk to one another and never backs away from messy complicated emotions. It's gorgeously stylized but it's still real. You won't really go wrong watching any of her films.
About All That Poetry: Even that turned out non-cringe-making. Abbie Cornish and Ben Whishaw manage to whip up the kind of chaste-yet-not-repressed, 19th century, cool-costumed yearning that makes their recitations to one another sound like really sexy dialogue they just thought up before the making out began.
Where You've Seen These People Before: Abbie Cornish was in Stop-Loss, Ben Whishaw played one of the Bob Dylans in I'm Not There, Kerry Fox is a Campion alum who starred in Angel at My Table but is most well known for Shallow Grave.