"Carol is set in the early 1950s, but Todd Haynes’ sumptuous drama clearly speaks to current times, where homosexual rights are still fought for daily. One of the best films of 2015, it stars Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara as fugitive lovers in the repressive America of the time. Screenwriter Phyllis Nagy adapts Patricia Highsmith’s 1952 cult novel The Price of Salt, said to have inspired Nabokov’s Lolita. Carol has been nominated for six Oscars, including Best acting nods for both actresses.
"Everything clicks into place for this gorgeous achievement. Blanchett and Mara dress and act like opposing figures from movie lore: Blanchett looks to be a femme-fatale type from film noir; Mara strongly resembles Audrey Hepburn at her most fragile. Yet they make for a love-at-first-sight match so intense that when each of them says at different points 'I’m starving,' you know they’re not really talking about food.
"When clothes are finally doffed in one censor-daring sex scene, the screen seems as if it is about to melt. But it’s what they do with their eyes that really heats things up. Desire is the hottest furnace.
"Blanchett’s Carol Aird is a middle-aged, affluent and forthright New Jersey housewife and mother who falls for Mara’s Therese Belivet, a timid 20-year-old salesclerk and aspiring photographer. They meet while Carol is Christmas shopping at a Manhattan store. Therese also feels the yearning sensation, her eyes locking with Carol’s across the crowded toy department. The suddenness of the attraction surprises both women.
"Both of them have bothersome men in their lives. That Carol and Therese would enter into a relationship, tentatively at first and then passionately, may not seem so dramatic a development in 2015. But consider the punitive early 1950s America where Carol and Therese live: homosexuality is considered a crime and a legally invoked 'morality clause' could deny Carol access to her daughter.
"Haynes reminds us how bad things used to be. He also invites us to remember how beautiful mad love can be and to swoon along with it." - Peter Howell, Toronto Star
Subscribe to our email list to stay informed! Subscribe