Jane Campion's Cannes contender reunites her with An Angel at My Table star Kerry Fox, reports Helen Barlow
Jane Campion's Bright Star is set to shine this year in Cannes with early reports suggesting it could follow 1993's The Piano and win the coveted Palme d'Or.
A sumptuous period drama focusing on the romance between the 19th-century British poet John Keats (Ben Whishaw) and his neighbour Fanny Brawne (Abbie Cornish), the film reunites Campion with Kerry Fox, the London-based New Zealander who left a defining mark with her portrayal of author Janet Frame in Campion's An Angel at My Table, 20 years ago.
"It was fantastic to work with Jane again, because I'm older now than she was when we made that film," says Fox. "It's really weird; you just think, how did that ever happen?"
What came as a bigger shock was the size of the role Campion offered her. "It's enormous," Fox enthuses. "I thought I'd be coming in for a day, 'Sure I'll do that,' I told her. But no, it's like I'm round like a rissole, because I'm playing Fanny's mother."
She recalls having to dress up in corsets and wearing a bonnet for Bright Star, an Australia/British co-production that was shot in England. "It's very lavish, Janet Patterson [Campion's regular] did the costumes and helped design it. It was a massive job."
Given that Campion tells Keats' story from Fanny's point of view, Mrs Brawne figures prominently. "There's not that much information about her, but after our story she was caught in a fire; she was incinerated while she was at home. It's terrible, imagine in those days! I don't know if she died instantly, but she would have been suffering. You know, we loved her as a character. We created this really warm, beautiful person. But we
kept thinking about how it must have been and kept making these terrible incineration jokes," Fox cackles naughtily.
Campion wrote the screenplay after being inspired by Andrew Motion's Keats biography.
Her story is as much about the creative process as it is a love story. We yearn, like Fanny does, as she reads the words Keats has written for her, and although we know that no long-term relationship can ever eventuate since Keats died at 25, we are lured into the possibility that it might.
"We had sessions learning about Keats and his poems and what they meant," explains Fox. "We had Andrew Motion talk us through a couple of his longer pieces. He's only just resigned from being the Poet Laureate and he's coming from an interesting angle, from trying to be fairhanded and not be swayed by hearsay or romanticism, about what really might have happened with Keats and what his life was like. You could see him struggling
to uncover the truth."
While Campion is an avowed Keats fan, Fox admits her love of poetry had a huge impact on her career. "I studied poetry from the age of 15, in and out of school. My entrance into acting came from reading poetry aloud." Although she knew her chosen profession at the age of six, it was when she studied acting at a tertiary level in Wellington that she really found her niche. "I was completely surrounded by people who spoke my language.
It was amazing."
Fox was fresh out of drama school when she auditioned for An Angel at My Table and met Campion for the first time. In the intervening years both women have had children who became their priorities. Campion, in particular, would only work when it suited her. It's as if she has saved up all her energy to make Bright Star.
"Jane was phenomenal, she was sort of beatific, she was incredibly generous, almost larger than life," Fox recalls.
"In terms of her nature, she seems to have gotten rid of a whole lot of stuff that was holding her up, which was really interesting. She doesn't have any bitterness, she was just completely positive, and it came across in so many ways. Obviously she'd started developing her way of working with An Angel at My Table, but you could see a progression. In rehearsals we didn't work on scenes, just on characters. She tried to keep everything
incredibly calm, natural and normal. She didn't want us to suddenly start acting. She wanted the transition between hanging around and the camera rolling to be really smooth. She worked hard at that."
Fox was last on stage in New Zealand three years ago with the Australian play, The Blonde, The Brunette and The Vengeful Redhead. "When we asked to do it in London the writer wouldn't give us the rights." Back in 1994, when Danny Boyle's now-cult film, Shallow Grave, was released to great reviews, it seemed it would be a big hit in the US, but the distributor went cold on the film. Fox may have won the best actress prize at the
Berlin Festival for Intimacy in 2001, but she could not attend due to her pregnancy.
"I did seriously think about getting on a train as I wouldn't have been allowed to fly, but I didn't," she says.
She made up this year by attending Berlin for the competition entry Storm, where she plays a prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague.
Tomorrow her film, The Shooting of Thomas Hurndall, in which she plays the mother of a boy shot by a British soldier, is up for best film at the television Bafta Awards. Then of course she will be in Cannes, with bells on.
"Work is always erratic," she says.
"Earlier this year I finished three very full-on jobs, more or less back-to-back, so I haven't thought about working for the last couple of months. I was exhausted and the cost to the family is quite high if my concentration isn't on. It's always a juggle."
LOWDOWN
Who: Kerry Fox
What: Bright Star, Jane Campion's film about the romance between John Keats and Fanny Brawne, likely for release later this year and a possible inclusion at this year's New Zealand International Film Festival
