Bright star! would I were steadfast as thou art -

You've still got It, Jane. You've never not had It, and Bright Star offers further, subtly risky, occasionally frisky, unabashedly romantic proof. Would that all period dramas had greasy hair and restless kitty cats. Would that every love story recognized that two people can grow respectful of each other's talents, even besotted with them, without necessarily entering into them, or fully adopting them as one's own. Would that every under-tested actor in the world got a role in a Jane Campion movie to demonstrate her mettle, or his. And if anything, would that all the critics who are relishing Bright Star will recognize in retrospect that In the Cut was already working toward these exciting dares in variable focus and semi-subversion of literary tropes, and that The Portrait of a Lady is as strong, rich, and evocatively idiosyncratic as this one is, but times ten.

Here's to the global resuscitation of Jane, even if she never should have needed "resuscitating." I'm still clapping in the front row, just like Holly, Anna, and I did back in the day. Granted, they were in the front row of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, and I was in the front row of my living room, but the principle was the same!