"Carol" Review

 

by Daniel White

Directed by Todd Haynes, based on the novel, The Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith, Carol (2015) is a visually delicious film. Set in an America that is as foreign and distant as the middle ages, the early 1950's, Haynes and the people working for him have evoked that time with gorgeous precision.

Carol Aird (the superb Cate Blanchett) is a wealthy New Jersey housewife, separated from her husband, Harge (Kyle Chandler), who meets a younger woman, Therese (Rooney Mara), while shopping for a Christmas present for her daughter. She has already explored her lesbianism with her friend, Abby (Sarah Paulson), and is eager to court the inexperienced shop girl.

A conventional love story, Haynes takes a conservative approach in telling it, and it is fitting for a tale set in a culturally closed time.

Carol and Therese attempt to explore their feelings for each other but they are hampered by the men in their lives. Angry, brusque, demanding men who keep barging in, unable or unwilling to consider the novel idea of two women in love, women who have little use for them. Eager to escape from their tormentors, they embark on a road trip west, where in a beautifully rendered scene their relationship is consummated. But even on the road, seemingly free from societal constrictions, they are tethered to their heterosexual lives. Harge has had them followed by a private detective in order to gain full custody of their daughter. With her parental rights in danger, Carol hurries home, abandoning Therese, who is escorted back to New York City by Abby.

A gay love story free from the angst of self loathing, Carol is refreshing. I attribute that positive queer outlook on the source material and the artists who brought the flick to life. Highsmith was a lesbian and screenwriter Phyllis Nagy a lady lover as well. And while you don't have to be a member of the LGBTQ community to make a movie about a queer romance, when the gays are in charge there is a definite authenticity, that may be lacking otherwise.

"Ask me things, please," Carol begs Therese at the beginning of their affair, a plea that is universal among lovers. Ask me anything you want, let me expose myself, let me reveal my essence to you. And isn't that what romantic love is, our desire to be known, to become intimately, achingly familiar with another human being.

Convincingly rooted in the early days of the Eisenhower era with exquisite attention paid to, among other things, the music, the cars, and the clothes (Cate Blanchett in a peplum!), Carol looks and feels as real as the love that exists between the two women.

With Jake Lacy, John Magaro, and Cory Michael Smith, Carol is currently streaming on Tubi.