Bright Star (PG, 2009)

Opposites attract in BRIGHT STAR, director Jane Campion's affecting portrait of the enduring love that develops between 19th-century Romantic poet John Keats (Ben Whishaw), and his Hampstead neighbor, Fanny Brawne (Abbie Cornish). Keats, then 23, was a struggling writer, while 18-year-old Fanny was a fashionable flirt with a gift for sewing and no interest in the art of words. But you can't choose who you fall in love with -- you're summoned. And summoned they are, despite Keats' inability to support a family, let alone himself. And when he's stricken with tuberculosis, the young lovers' odds don't improve.

Period dramas often stumble because they can feel like play acting. Viewers are keenly aware that the events took place long ago, if at all, and are rarely invested in what they see. Bright Star isn't hobbled like this. It enfolds you in remarkable beauty, while also being grounded in a palpable sense of time and place. Campion brings the heath to life, and it's glorious to witness to Keats' and Brawne's relationship. There's a grace to the director's storytelling, and in her capable hands, both love and poetry become accessible.

But this is no fairy tale, either. Campion deftly explores class differences and artistic pressures as well as budding romance. Whishaw, as Keats, broods and contemplates (as poets do) without coming off as clichéd -- when he struggles to write, it's as if he's truly wrestling with words, and when his poems are finally read, they stun. Cornish is so authentic that you'll forget she's no 19th-century maiden; dialogue isn't just dialogue when she says it, and love no mere plot point when she feels it. Authenticity, in fact, permeates the whole movie. When Keats and Fanny place their hands on the wall separating their rooms, each on opposite sides, we feel privy to a genuine moment between two people helplessly enamored of each other.