Poet John Keats (Ben Whishaw, left) and neighbour Fanny Brawne (Abbie Cornish) fall in love in Jane Campion's Bright Star. (ATV Films)

“A thing of beauty is a joy forever.” So wrote John Keats, the doomed Romantic poet who is the subject of Jane Campion’s latest film, Bright Star.

If that quotation conjures up images of musty Merchant Ivory period dramas or quivering poets staring at blank pages, Campion wisely avoids both of those approaches. Bright Star is a thing of beauty in its own right, a piece of assured filmmaking that is vibrant, smart and passionate.

Bright Star focuses on the three productive years at the end of John Keats’s life, when the poet fell in love with the woman who would inspire some of his greatest works.

Though Campion acknowledges Andrew Motion’s respected book on Keats in the film’s credits, Bright Star never plays like a biopic. Instead, the film focuses on the three productive years at the end of Keats’s life, when he fell in love with the woman who would inspire some of his greatest works, including the poem Bright Star.

That muse is Fanny Brawne (Abbie Cornish), an 18-year-old who lives next door to Keats (Ben Whishaw) in London’s remote Hampstead village. Like the women who populate Campion’s previous films, Fanny is an unconventional heroine: headstrong, flirty, creative and a bit of a handful. When we first see her, she’s fast at work with a needle and thread, crafting one of the ornate dresses that are her trademark.

Fanny’s initial meeting with her sickly, melancholic neighbour hardly inspires fireworks. She’s wholly unimpressed by Keats’s profession, cheekily boasting that her stitching will actually earn her some money one day. He dismisses her as an air-headed fashionista “minx.” But Fanny keeps seeking Keats out, eventually asking for lessons to help her understand his poetry. And when, on one fateful occasion, he touches her hand, the young seamstress is a goner.

This being 1818, when couples were rarely without a chaperone, the blossoming love affair is never consummated. But Campion has a flair for big-time sensuality, and I doubt I’ll see anything more erotic this year than the furtive kisses these two steal while strolling on the lush Hampstead Heath, or the moment when the young lovers are shown caressing the bedroom wall that divides them.

Keats (Ben Whishaw) and Brawne (Abbie Cornish) savour their brief time without a chaperone. (ATV Films)

Using swift, subtle strokes, Campion conveys the class differences that threaten to tear Fanny and Keats apart — scenes where the poet’s ruddy fingers are intertwined with Fanny’s more delicate hand, or a lingering shot of the poet’s rumpled blue jacket make it clear Mrs. Brawne (Kerry Fox) will never sanction this match. Outside disapproval only fuels their intense love, and when Keats leaves the village to do some writing, he sends letters that drive Fanny half-mad with longing. Inspired by the poet’s wish that they could be “butterflies that lived only for three summer days,” Fanny responds by holing up in her room, forgoing food and breeding a colony of fragile, blue-winged butterflies in his honour. Keats is equally masochistic, describing how he’s “dissolving” without her by his side.

This could be unbearably precious, were it not for the two lead performances. Whishaw’s delicate features suggest Keats’s hyper-sensitivity. The way his eyes dart about nervously every time he recites one of his poems suggests an artist still uncertain of his abilities. It’s up to Fanny to help him bloom, and from Bright Star’s first frames it’s clear Abbie Cornish is all in. She gives an astonishing, star-making performance. Fanny’s emotions simmer just below the surface, and Cornish is able to access them with lightning speed — whether she’s blushing at the object of her desire or letting out anguished, girlish sobs that send shudders right through her.

Campion also appears to be feeling her way right down into the guts of the material. Gone are the heavy-handed touches that have marred some of her recent films, like In the Cut (2003) or Holy Smoke (1999). In Bright Star, she gives herself over to images and sensations, savouring the gentle rumble of a cat’s purrs, or studying the way a navy blue dress looks against a backdrop of purple wildflowers. The result is gorgeous, and gives a stronger impression of Keats’s art than a conventional biopic could hope to offer.

At one point in Bright Star, Keats instructs Fanny: “A poem needs understanding through the senses. The point of diving in a lake is not immediately to swim to the shore; it's to be in the lake, to luxuriate in the sensation of water. You do not work the lake out. It is an experience beyond thought.”

He is speaking of what makes great poetry, of course, but it’s what lies at the heart of great movies, too.

Bright Star opens in Toronto, Victoria and Ottawa Sept. 25.

Lee Ferguson writes about the arts for CBCNews.ca.