The movie takes place in the mid-19th century. There’s something incredibly of that time about Abbie Cornish. The frankness of the performance though feels very modern. It’s a beautiful combination. It made the movie more complicated because of that conflict in the character — what she wanted versus what her times would allow her. The tenderness that the character had the softness was so completely of her. Abbie Cornish isn’t brazen but she has a certain defiance. From the first time that the camera discovers her Fanny I felt that there was an incredible acceptance on her part of what this love was going to ask. And some of it in some ways was beyond her means. And none of it did Keats seem to require. Fanny’s reading of Milton and Shelley didn’t seem to be a requirement of his. It was something that she took on. I felt it was very naive and charming. This was a desire that she had so much so that she flagrantly lied to Brown about having read everybody in a week. She was a neophyte. She was new at poetry didn’t understand poetry. She couldn’t find a way in. But I loved her.

Source: Variety.com