After a few anticipated summer blockbusters, film critics and fans eagerly await the arrival of fall and the push of some possible Oscar contenders. Settling in to watch director/writer Jane Campion’s Bright Star, I didn’t expect it to be so delightful. The story of the affair between poet John Keats and his neighbor Fanny Brawne is wistfully told yet unfolds with the charm and beauty of a treasured family heirloom.

In 1818 London, Keats (Ben Whishaw) and his friend Charles Armitage Brown (Paul Schneider) serve as each other’s muse. They work endlessly on the written word. While Keats struggles to get his work seen, Brown believes in his friend, even sacrificing his own time and money to support him while he waits to be discovered.

Enter Fanny Brawne (Abbie Cornish), a quiet girl whose handiwork with a needle is a simple measure of the exuberance she feels when in the room with Keats. She wants to learn about poetry, and Brown sees that Keats brightens at her visits. Brown believes she’s stealing his friend’s creative energy, and he becomes sullen and unfriendly.

When Keats’ brother dies, Fanny is there for him in ways Brown is not. Keats becomes more infatuated with her, teaching her poetry and writing poems about her. He opens up a world of imagination and hopefulness Fanny never imagined for herself. Warned by her mother (Kerry Fox) of the improprieties of the couple’s closeness, Fanny turns a deaf ear. All might have ended well if Keats had not been sent to Italy after becoming very ill. He promised to return to Fanny -- but died at the age of 25.

Campion has done an incredible job with the layering of Bright Star -- which gets its name from a verse Keats wrote for Fanny in the margin of a Shakespeare volume (“Bright Star, would I were steadfast as thou art — Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night...”).

This film exudes the era of a time when days were long and filled with necessity more than pleasure. Each scene appears so detailed: it’s like taking in a deep breath and holding it as long as you can, then watching as the conventional becomes something extraordinary. Everything here seems enhanced by Greig Fraser’s exceptional cinematography plus set and costume designs that become the framework holding the story together, and by Campion’s wonderful script.

“I was reading a biography of Keats,” Campion said. “I got to the part where he met Fanny and I fell in love with their story. I was drawn to the pain and beauty and innocence of their love affair. I was incredibly moved by Andrew Motion's book. They were so young; it was a true life Romeo and Juliet story well-documented but one I had not known.”

Casting was foremost in telling this beautiful story. Expecting an actor to set a mood for his character and maintain it throughout a film is a tall order. Whishaw’s rare ability to appear dangerous and fascinating as well as dark and innocent was exactly what his previous director Tom Tykwer wanted for Perfume: The Story of a Murderer. Whishaw also stands out in Brideshead Revisited, and Campion found he surpassed her expectations.

“I looked at this young man, this creature, beautiful like a cat, not real almost,” Champion said. “When he spoke, he sounded like Keats, not posh, slightly London or northern. In the audition he was completely brave, open emotionally, febrile yet strong and very sensual and intimate with the actress reading for Fanny. Later in rehearsal I found his presence addictive.”

Whishaw’s performance comes across as mesmerizing, and Cornish delivers an equally skilled turn as the complex Fanny. Together, they achieve a sexual chemistry that’s derailed only by the era in which they live.

Campion won the Best Screenplay Academy Award for The Piano and was also nominated as Best Director for that film. She has created a large footprint as a female filmmaker, and I think Bright Star is her best film yet.

Although not a movie for anyone who expects action, predictability or a cookie-cutter Hollywood movie, Bright Star is one of those rare films that critics wait for and moviegoers can’t wait to tell their friends about. Oscar nominations may be on their way at last.

(Released by Apparition and rated “PG” for thematic elements, some sensuality, brief language and incidental smoking.)

Review also posted at www.reviewexpress.com.