Actress Abbie Cornish is turning heads at Cannes for obvious reasons, and for her starring role as Fanny Brawne in Bright Star. THE ASSOCIATED PRESS/ Matt Sayles

CANNES — Filmmaker Jane Campion went back nearly 200 years to make the period piece Bright Star, the true story of a tragic yet beautiful love affair between English poet John Keats and his feisty neighbour, Fanny Brawne.

But Abbie Cornish, a drop-dead Australian starlet who could emerge as the next Cate Blanchett, did the research and then forgot all about the past when playing the title role.

“In approaching Fanny,” Cornish told a Cannes news conference yesterday, “you do all your research into history and you learn about their life and times — and then to kind of set that free and let that person come to life and be real.”

Bright Star made its debut as a competition gala, thrilling those who admire subtle personal cinema (although some foolishly thought it boring because there is not enough action). Campion won the Palme d’Or in 1993 with The Piano, another masterful film which also depended on the audience’s willingness to look at characters through their emotional depths.

Cornish (from Ridley Scott’s A Good Year with Russell Crowe) said she was instantly attracted to Bright Star when reading Campion’s script. “I fell in love with the film instantly. There was no question about it.”

Fanny, Cornish explained, was fascinating to her: “Just how alive and present she was and the incredible depth of love she developed and held for Keats and how caring and nurturing she was through that process. There is definitely gusto to Fanny Brawne that appealed to me. And it was very important to Jane, as well, to bring through that kind of charisma and flamboyance and liveliness.”

Campion said that Bright Star, by telling the story of Keats through the eyes of Fanny, is a feminist film because she is a feminist — with no apologies. “I don’t think you can be a woman and not be a feminist in that sense. Because you are a woman, you see through female eyes. I look at female in the broadest sense. I think that any man who doesn’t have female in him is half a person, the same way that I think I’m quite masculine, a bit of both.”

In developing Bright Star as a film, Campion said, “I fell in love with Fanny as much as I did with Keats. I think telling the story through Fanny’s eyes was such a brilliant way for me to meet Keats, because I know Fanny fell in love with him and, that way, you could fall in love with Keats.”