Jane Campion’s laugh comes as a rather lovely surprise: full, throaty and often directed at herself, it betrays a personality more robust, mischievous even, than one might surmise from her fragile, often solemn films. It’s a disconnect she cheerfully acknowledges, and credits in part to her collaborators.
“As a filmmaker, it helps me to be around young people,” she says, referring to the unusually youthful cast and crew of “Bright Star,” her exquisite meditation on first love, nature and poetry – via the star-crossed affair of John Keats and his teenaged lover Fanny Brawne.
“People in their twenties can be quite moody and quiet, and not in a bad way – they know how to be alone with their thoughts. People my age tend to blab on a bit without thinking, like I’m doing now.”
She laughs again. If that’s a frequent occurrence over the course of our phone conversation, it could be because Campion is as relaxed and content as she has ever been in her career. Her first feature since 2003’s harshly-received erotic thriller “In the Cut,” “Bright Star” has placed the New Zealander back in critics’ good graces, even if it looks increasingly unlikely to emulate the Oscar success of her 1993 breakthrough “The Piano.”