We’ve all had a crush on the girl next door. There’s something mysterious, but at the same time achievable, about them. In the case of John Keats, though, his relationship with his next door neighbour, Fanny Brawne, inspired some of the greatest love poetry ever written, and now the stunning new film, Bright Star.

Keats was 23, and Fanny 18, when their secret love affair began, but within two years the poet would be dead. What Jane Campion’s movie captures is all the joy and pain of a first love, heightened by the looming threat of Keats’ tuberculosis. Notes are passed, fingers touched, and eyelashes counted as the romance grows and grows.

Campion, best known for The Piano, gets all the intimacy and restraint across with many subtle touches in what is an atmospheric and beautifully shot film. The only problem is that some of the power and brightness will be lost when it is not watched on the big screen.

The solid acting performances will not diminish, though. Ben Whishaw, described by Campion as “beautiful like a cat”, plays Keats with a quiet intensity. While Abbie Cornish, who plays Fanny, and who has more than a passing resemblance to Nicole Kidman, albeit younger and more voluptuous, is captivating.

Talking about the role, Cornish explained how Fanny “bounced off the page into my imagination and just came to life. Keats opens her to life and I thought that was really beautiful. It’s such a beautiful love story.”

But no all-consuming love affair is complete without the jealous best friend; in this case the brash Scotsman and self-styled poet-in-arms, Charles Armitage Brown (played by Paul Schneider).

For much of the film Brawne and Brown quarrel over the territory of Keats. For the Scotsman, Fanny is getting in the way of the real work to be done, which is writing profound poetry.  The fact that Keats’ most powerful poetry comes during these months is not lost on the audience, and increasingly not on Brown either.

In fact poetry is inextricably tied up in the love between Fanny and John Keats. “I was determined to get as much of his poetry in as we could,” Campion explains. “Keats is a great explainer of poetry and I wanted to use that in the story. Poetry is a drug really, it goes into your head and it sticks.”

So when we hear Keats’ poem, Bright Star, the words are all the more powerful for what we’ve seen unfold. Lines like

Pillow’d upon my fair love’s ripening breast,
To feel forever its soft fall and swell

and

Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath

are brought alive.

As Whishaw puts it, “I think Keats was very complicated and probably a genius.” And this certainly comes through. But what really goes into your head and sticks is the all-consuming, touching, powerful, innocent love of Fanny Brawne and John Keats.