Bright Star: Just say yes… (9/28/09)

…to saying no. It's hawter that way.


When I saw the trailer for Bright Star, the Regency piece about John Keats and Fanny Brawne, I thought it looked like the sort of movie I ought to watch, especially as I now have Anglotastic as an excuse for such behavior as obsessively watching period dramas.



But when I saw this on the homepage of the New York Times two Fridays ago, I knew it was the sort of movie I HAD to watch, because Hot English Chastity is totally my bag.

The New York Times reps for Bright Star.

I would like to write a long, lovely post about how gorgeous the movie was; how perfect every moment; how fabulous Fanny's fashion-designing, fierce independence; how hilarious the constant presence of Fanny's totally adorbs brother and sister; how much I sobbed at the end.

Abbie Cornish as Fanny Brawne with Ben Whishaw as John Keats in Sexual Tension: The Movie.

But it was just too beautiful for words, and I can't. I can say—and it pains me to write this, truly it does—that there is a possibility that it is as good as, or even better than, Pride & Prejudice '95.

*ducks behind shield so as to avoid readers' barrage of angry arrows*

I can also say that the verily pornographic sequence that accompanied the opening credits—extreme close-up shots of a needle making its way back and forth through a piece of fabric—was brilliant and hilarious.

Fanny and Keats with the fam. Little redheaded girl = cutest kid ever.

Oh, and I have not yet mentioned the Hot English Chastity? No? In that case, let's talk about sex(ual tension).

In brief, sexual tension is totally underrated. But in Bright Star, we never see Keats and Fanny Do It. Not even that Gone With the Wind morning-after smile. And that is fabulous, 'cause there's nothing more ovary-melting than oodles of anticipation.

YA novels are the best place for it. In possibly my fave homage to the beauty of Not Doing It, the heroine in Wendy Lichtman's Do the Math: Secrets, Lies, and Algebra compares sexual tension to an asymptote: a curve that moves closer and closer to another curve.

For infinity.

Without.

Ever.

Touching.

I know, right? And then there's this, from Sarah Ockler's Twenty Boy Summer:

When I take his iPod to scroll through his songs, Sam puts his arm around me, strong and protective and tan and a little banged up. The heat from his skin seeps into my shoulders, and I am so suddenly alive that if I don't kiss him right this second, we will both burst into flames and die.

Hahaha! I love it.

And THAT is why Britty period dramas like Bright Star, Pride and Prejudice, and North and South (featuring the single hottest hand-holding moment of all time) are so rad. Not Doing It is the new Doing It. (Can I get an amen from Sting?)

In Bright Star, Keats does not Do It.

Ummm. I think I maybe need to go visit Richard Armitage circa 1850 now.