Director: Todd Haynes
Cast: Cate Blanchett, Rooney Mara, Sarah Paulson, Jake Lacy, John Magaro, Cory Michael Smith, Carrie Brownstein, Kevin Crowley, Nik Pajic, Kyle Chandler.
Running Time: 118 minutes
Certificate: 15
Release Date: 27th November 2015
It’s become one of the most awaited films of the year after critics raved at the Cannes Film Festival back in May; a love story set in the 1950’s starring one delicate Rooney Mara and our can-d0-no-wrong all time love Cate Blanchett, a duo which such fierce chemistry, that the lines of fiction are somewhat blurred.
CAROL, based on the novel THE PRICE OF SALT by Patricia Highsmith, features Carol Aird, played by Cate Blanchett, a bold and wealthy suburban housewife. Though she isn’t necessarily the bread winner of the family, she still oozes power and confidence, dressed in fur with her impeccably manicured nails and her dark sultry voice. It’s while shopping for an extravagant gift for Christmas that she meets doe-eyed, naive, and indecisive sales assistant Therese Belivet, played by Rooney Mara, who within one glance is infatuated. There is an invisible magnet between the two, a fascination with each other that they both don’t seem to be able to understand nor work out. As their love story progresses, they face hardships with overwhelming odds, which is the product of the culture and era in which they live in. The discrimination is never shown on the surface of the narrative, but subtly within a court injunction handed by Carol’s ex-husband Harge, played by Kyle Chandler, accusing her of following a morally indecent lifestyle that could harm their child, and therefore grant him full custody of their daughter.
CAROL’s build up is a long and winding road, though not in a negative light. We as an audience needed their relationship to develop organically; they as a couple are so intense, that rushing into it would have lost so many intimate and crucial moments. By the time they embrace and allow each other to physically express their love, we are whole heartedly rooting for them to indulge in their mutual desire. It felt almost like breathing after holding your breath for too long. Such can be said for it’s ending too – Haynes gives the audience the long awaited happy ending to a lesbian romance that we’ve been holding out for, and in those final extraordinary moments when Therese and Carol lock eyes, it made me giddy with glee that these two entirely different characters may together, at the end of it all, find joy.
CAROL’s narrative is a relatively simple one, but Todd Haynes follows it through effortlessly, resulting in a finely tuned piece that burns slowly and conveys the sexual tension with lingering eye contact, close-ups, and above all, silence. Thankfully, this film doesn’t turn into a long court room drama Kramer vs Kramer style, but focuses more on the damaging effects on Carol herself, where the audience sees that Therese is all she has left to keep her going and yet, simultaneously, is the reason for her current predicament.
I feel it would be restrictive and almost incompetent to class this purely as an LGBT film. CAROL simply showcases the situation of being a lesbian in the 1950’s, but does so without having to point with massive neon signs screaming THIS IS A LESBIAN FILM! Not at any point in this film does anybody make a big fuss about the two main lovers being females, and in truth, it felt so natural to see Mara and Blanchett on the screen together, that my mind didn’t note it as a component that needed registering. It was treated with the same respect as any other romantic film, and at it’s core, it’s a deep and sincere human love story.
Though CAROL is set in a far less tolerant era than today, it still doesn’t make an issue out of being a lesbian, in fact the word lesbian isn’t mentioned even once in the film all together. Carol’s soon to be ex-husband Harge is an odd character that we don’t particularly like but whole heartedly sympathise with. Taking Carol to court is a vindictive act, but after reflecting on the film, I realise it’s not an act of discrimination because she’s falling in love with a woman, but purely because she’s falling OUT of love with him. Once again the bottom line is, it could be another man, a woman, a bloody yeti for all he’d care, it’s still about that fact that she no longer cares for him as he still cares for her, and Todd Haynes makes this not a story about being broken down for being a lesbian, but all the lives that are effected in a situation as complex as Carol’s.
There are very few “high budget” films focusing on lesbian romance currently out there, and to consider CAROL a high budget is almost laughable. In a recent interview with USA Today, Rooney Mara spoke about how they had to make the budget smaller extremely close to shooting, reasoning the question as to whether they had to take a salary cut, in which Blanchett responded dryly “Salary?”. Probably the most recently notable film focusing on the lust and heartache of a lesbian relationship would be BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOUR starring Léa Seydoux and Adèle Exarchopoulos, and upcoming film FREEHELD, with Julianne Moore and Ellen Page, about New Jersey’s police liuetenant Laurel Hester and her battle to secure her pension benefits for her partner when she is diagnosed with terminal cancer.
CAROL is a superbly crafted film that builds slowly, creates bonds, and quietly portrays the selfless unadulterated love between two beings. As Phyllis Nagy, screenwriter and adaptor for CAROL, said recently in an article for THE GUARDIAN “Lesbianism is not an issue. It’s a state of normal”.
CAROL: In cinemas in the UK from Friday 27th November.
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