If you've ever fallen for an artist - be it painter, musician, writer; whatever - then you know that that love is both a blessing and a curse, a thing you would hope for everyone and wish on no one. The highs are soaring and the lows can be torturous, but it's those extremes that invariably conjure the muse. She is nothing if not elusive, so the challenge of her capriciousness will often force your needs to take a back seat to her whims. And though it certainly takes a special sort of soul to lay themselves bare in the name of self-expression, those who willingly love an artist are driven creators in their own right, the tools of their trade patience, generosity, and truly heavy mettle.

At first blush a gorgeous, graceful frock flick about the three-year affair between 19th century Romantic poet John Keats and Fanny Brawne, the literal girl next door, "Bright Star" slyly, almost subversively, emerges as a spirited ode to Brawne, an unmistakably modern young woman beneath her corseted trappings. It's hardly surprising that "Bright Star" should spring from the mind of Jane Campion, the Kiwi writer-director who previously explored the societal expectations of females in films like 1999's "Holy Smoke," 1996's "Portrait of a Lady," and her Oscar winner, 1993's "The Piano." A gutsy but inconsistent filmmaker - her most recent feature was 2003's embarrassing "In the Cut" - Campion hits all the right notes in "Bright Star," easily her best work in 15 years and one of the loveliest films of 2009.

Opening in Hampstead Heath, 1818, "Bright Star" is almost as exquisitely crafted as Brawne's luscious empire-waisted dresses, which she designs herself and constructs with so much care that Keats' closest friend Charles Armitage Brown, a windy Scotsman, dismisses her as vain and shallow. But the stubborn Brawne (Abbie Cornish, "Elizabeth: The Golden Age") is so determined to learn about the art of poetry from her neighbor Keats (Ben Whishaw, "I'm Not There") that she weathers the sarcastic, at times overtly hostile, treatment of Brown (David Gordon Green regular Paul Schneider) in order to spend time with her tutor. Of course a pull develops between the feisty seamstress and the penniless poet, though a match is out of the question due to the rules of the time that require money rather than love.

Campion also devotes loving attention to everyday life in Regency-era England, with detailed interludes of Brawne's mother (that's Kerry Fox from "Shallow Grave") keeping the household humming, her younger brother and sister at play in the meadow, and quiet evenings in front of the fire. But "Bright Star" shines hottest during the blossoming of the not-so-secret romance between Brawne and Keats, which threatens to open into a full-blown love triangle with the perpetual intrusion of the jealous Brown, his motives deliciously ambiguous. History tells us that the fragile Keats didn't see 26 years old, making this tragic tale of unconsummated love all the more poignant, and every glance, kiss, and stroke of the fingers blissfully erotic in their yearning purity.

And now's the part where I admit I was wrong about Abbie Cornish. Her early roles in films like 2004's "Somersault" and 2006's "Candy" caused me to relegate her to the insubstantial ingenue pile, but hidden beneath severe brown hair and a fuller figure, Cornish is a revelation in nuance, striking the proper balance between the euphoria and agony attendant to first love (and the rest of them, too). And though Whishaw turns in an admirable performance as the troubled Keats, much of his verse inspired by this formidable girl - including the poem from which "Bright Star" takes its title - it's the North Carolina-born Schneider who commands the screen. His skilled work in "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford" reportedly caused Campion to cast him as Brown, and Schneider rewards her faith with an unexpectedly brilliant performance, his coarse bluster morphing into helplessness and guilt over the fate of his friend.

Thanks to accomplished cinematography by Greig Fraser, "Bright Star" is the most visually intoxicating film in far too long. The painterly images are riots of color and, somehow, texture, especially a vivid set piece involving a roomful of butterflies that is nothing short of stunning. Campion uses the spaces in between words very powerfully here, relying on things unsaid rather than an obtrusive score to tell us how to feel in any given scene, and more than a few of those moments in "Bright Star" ache the heart.

Bright Star

(PG), written and directed by Jane Campion

Opens Friday