Rate-a-Trailer: Jane Campion’s Bright Star

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As if last week’s Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters wasn’t enough, this morning the internet brings us the trailer for Bright Star , the period drama about the life, love, and lyrics of poet John Keats. (The title comes from one of his sonnets.) Though he only lived to 25, that was plenty of time for Keats to write scads of poetry and engage in a doomed love affair with girl next door Fanny Brawne (played by Abbie Cornish, whose turn in Elizabeth: The Golden Age must have given her a yen for period drama).

Keats himself is played by Ben Whishaw, who has been in plenty of indie movies but hasn’t broken through just yet. Will this be his shot?

Another indie favorite, Paul Schneider, joins the cast as Charles Armitage Brown, Keats’ best friend and the person who rescued much of his work from the trashcan.

The trailer looks a little too much like every single period drama ever, but writer-director Jane Campion won an Oscar for her screenplay for 1993’s The Piano, so we won’t underestimate her.