I’m a massive fan of period dramas. I love a bit of bodice-ripping action with impossible hairstyles and aristocrats declaring their undying love to one another in foggy moors. Hell, I even love it when someone develops a bloody cough after spending too much time out in the damp. I’m an absolute sucker for it.

And it’s because of this enthusiasm for ye olde period drama that I attended a screening of Bright Star, Jane Campion’s latest film that centres on romantic poet John Keats and his affairs of the heart.

Oh, how I was to be disappointed.

Bright Star introduces us to Fanny Brawne, played by Abbie Cornish. Fanny has some mad skillz in the sewing department and delights in boasting to everyone in the village about said talents. Her fashion sense is one of the most confounding aspects of this film - it is focused on intently in the first part of the narrative and then amounts to absolutely nothing. You feel as if you’re being taken on a mad plot goose chase as a viewer.

But I digress. Miss Brawne meets John Keats, a struggling poet who can’t get hitched as he’s unemployed.  But this doesn’t stop Keats and Brawne embarking on a dramatic love affair that becomes painfully pathetic at times - she lies on the floor for days on end when he travels to London and he sleeps under a wet bush at one stage because he thinks his heart is going to break. They snip locks of each other’s hair, sprout poetry at one another without warning and have a delightful little ritual where they knock on the wall between their bedrooms each night.   

Usually I’m a sucker for romantic films but Bright Star was just too nauseating, even for me. And it would seem I wasn’t the only one in the audience that felt this way – the audible groans coming from the men in the cinema echoed my sentiments.

Perhaps my lack of emotional connection to the film came from the fact that I just didn’t like the character of Fanny. She exuded arrogance, self-indulgence and a general lack of care for her family – especially her adorable little ranga sibling. It’s hard to get swept up in the romance of somebody you just don’t generally like. And that’s not a slight on Cornish – her performance is really very good. It’s more about the character she played.

One of the positive aspects is that visually this film is quite beautiful. Lilting scenes of the characters lazing about in the English garden in spring are mesmerising to watch. It’s like watching a piece of fine art that moves.

The thing that really puzzles me is that everyone else is going nuts for this film. It was apparently a wild success when it screened at Cannes and reviewers around the world are heaping praise on it – in fact, David Gritten from The Telegraph in the UK recently gave it five stars and labelled it ‘exquisite’.

I understand that director Jane Campion is an accomplished filmmaker and deserves a certain amount of respect for being the only female director to win the Palme d'Or. And The Piano was undeniably magnificent - it’s a film that sears itself into your memory forever. But for me Bright Star had no such resonance.

It’s quite possible that this film has simply gone over my head, or I’ve missed something completely vital in the plotline (perhaps it was revealed that Fanny Brawn is actually BLIND while I was in the toilet, thus explaining the impressive nature of her sewing skills?!) … but I just don’t think so.

I feel a bit like the chap in the story about the Emperor with no clothes. Everyone is pontificating about this "exquisite" and "sacred" film, but all I can see is a frustrating mix of characters and events with occasional moments of beauty and poetry.

Bright Star opens in Australian cinemas on Boxing Day.