Carol

“Just when you think you can’t get any worse, you run out of cigarettes” 

Todd Haynes has previously demonstrated his expertise with character dramas in Far from Heaven and his miniseries Mildred Pierce. Now he reunites with his I’m Not There star, Cate Blanchett in Carol, an adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s novel of the same name. 

Christmas in the early 1950s. Therese Belivet (Rooney Mara), an amateur photographer, is working in Frankenberg’s department store, calm amongst the chaos of the seasonal period. Across the room, an elegant older woman, Carol (Cate Blanchett) admires a model train set. The two get chatting and she orders the trainset. After Carol ‘accidentally’ leaves her gloves behind in the store, Therese mails them off. So begins a series of rendezvous between these two women, stuck in their individual unsatisfying relationships and each looking for something more intimate. 

This really is a slow-burn character drama, which might not be to everybody’s tastes. It takes its time to build nuanced characters, although the interactions between Carol and Therese escalate into a relationship a little too quickly to be entirely believable. Phyllis Nagy’s screenplay does an excellent job of exploring sexuality beyond the confines of the labels. It’s difficult to tell exactly where the two leads each sit on the broad spectrum of sexual identity - given their unfulfilled yet notable liaisons with men - but the definitions get swept aside to focus on a multi-layered relationship between two women that aren’t sure where they’re going with their lives. 

Set in the 1950s, Carol manages to be subtle in its portrayal of the era, by which I mean it doesn’t overdo it to the point of caricature as some recent period pieces have. The film was shot on 16mm film by cinematographer Edward Lachman, and the soft, warm image with unexpectedly dull colours mirrors the tone of the film. At times Carol even takes on aspects of film noir, an effective style for both the setting and the duplicitous aspects of the story. 

Blanchett is, as usual fantastic. Carol’s dry-wit and cynicism act as a shield to the fragility that we as

an audience see in her. Her difficult husband and divorce proceedings are only part of the problem as she seems to be hiding more about herself than at first glance, which turns out to be her lack of satisfaction in life. All of this comes across with subtlety and ease thanks to Blanchett’s devoted understanding of the art. 

Rooney Mara is just as good; Therese in a similar yet different way to Carol, has a vulnerable streak to her and has an innocence that comes out through things like her photography. Although it’s more of an aside, Therese’s photographic hobby, in the way that it’s developed (pun not intended) felt like a nod to the naval-gazing characters of French new wave films. Carol could have so easily become a melodrama, but - aside from one scene - it manages to stay grounded thanks largely to the two lead performances. 

Todd Haynes has developed another detailed character drama with Carol, thanks to a great screenplay and brilliant performances. However as I said it is very much a slow-burn film and for quite a while I lost focus. I feel that I’ll need to see this again to really pick up on the details.