Movieline

Bright Star, Bad News

The good news for the media attending today's packed TIFF screening of Jane Campion's Oscar-hopeful Bright Star? The first 100 minutes were terrific! The bad news: The final 19 were upside down. A plattering snafu flipped the films final reel into a fuzzy, hazy, hallucinogenic blur featuring ailing poet John Keats and his lover Fanny Brawne sharing their last moments -- backwards. If you thought Keats's language was beautiful in English, there's an even more singular pleasure in hearing it run in the clipped dialect perhaps best known as Lynchian. Tough break; it happens to even the best of festivals, but more than 300 people filed out without knowing how the couple's tragic romance ends. Or at least the part up until Keats dies at the tender age of 25. Spoiler alert?