Oh, Carol!
The film Carol could have equally been called Therese, so similarly powerful is the performance of Rooney Mara, who plays Therese Belivet, a young, earnest, toy department store assistant in 1950s Manhattan. Therese’s life is transformed completely one day when Carol Aird, a fur-clad, thirty-something soon-to-be-divorced socialite strolls into the department store one day to look for a Christmas gift for her little girl Rindy. Those blue eyes above that meaningful purse of the lips that are so uniquely Cate Blanchett – lock on Therese’s across the room and something stirs in that moment in both.
Carol, on not finding the ideal doll for Rindy, asks Therese what she wanted as a child (“a train set”), orders it as recommended, and somehow leaves her gloves on the counter. Therese does the good deed of sending them back – a meal is proposed out of gratitude where their fate is sealed. What follows is a visit by Therese to Carol’s comfortable home, then Carol to Therese’s lonely apartment, then both go on a road trip for Carol to escape the stress of her divorce. Therese in all of her wide-eyed, adoring innocence, submits to Carol’s each new suggestion without abandon, refreshingly accepting and not questioning her own desires.
The love affair here is not intense in the way some recent movies on the theme have been and there’s not a lot of skin – it is the 1950s after all, when same-sex relationships were still difficult and dangerous, such that novelist Patricia Highsmith used a pseudonym when writing The Price of Salt, the novel on which Carol is based that mirrored many aspects of Highsmith’s life. In addition, both women carry quite a bit of baggage – Carol loves her little girl and has custody concerns, while her husband Harge, despite his suspicions about Therese due to a one-night tryst Carol had with her lesbian best friend Abby some years back, and despite everything – still has a grudging, unrequited love for his wife. Therese, meanwhile, has a dream of being a photographer one day, and her placidity does nothing to deter male suitors from her all-round radiance, fronted by an adoring, if not annoying boyfriend who wants to marry her.
Director Todd Haynes chose to shoot Carol on 16mm film, and imbued the film with muted colours that create a gorgeously grainy feel for that era. The romance builds up languorously, deliberately, tenderly against Carter Burwell’s haunting soundtrack. The most sensual parts of it are not the love scenes (there are a few), but in the very first press of Carol’s hand on Therese’s shoulder, in that very Blanchette tilt of Carol’s head with the recurrent knowing, loving gaze, in the conversations and sideways glances both women have, and in that shy smile that is Therese’s response to Carol’s pointed comments like “Strange girl you are – flung out of space”.
A minor spoiler here is that there never really is a dangerous moment in the film. Therese discovers Carol carries a gun for safety that threatens to be used, and her jealous husband Harge does the ugly unthinkable thing of seeking proof of Carol’s preferences to build his case for custody of their daughter.
Yet, when you see that all Carol and Therese have are concern for each other’s outcomes, rather than shame and anxiety over their most intimate moments being exposed, you know that there aren’t any baddies in the film – just a group of tortured, 1950s New Yorkers trying to come to grips with a new awakening.
Even then the movie never ceases to hold you in its thrall, and at times you think the magnetism between the two heroines are sufficient to drown out everything else and carry the film on their own.
Carol the movie is about Carol from Therese’s perspective, but Therese’s brazen embrace of this newfound love is a sign of quiet confidence and comfort in her own skin. She slowly comes into her own as her photographic talent grows in recognition – in this same way, Rooney Mara too comes into her own with a majestic performance that renders her as deserving of the accolades that Cate Blanchett has garnered in the title role.
Carol’s final scene and the devastating, longing gaze that lingers continues to haunt me long after I left the theatre, leaving me with a desperation to preserve the delicious memory of what must be one of the best movies of this year.
Carol opens in Singapore at the theatres on 24 December 2015.
Director: Todd Haynes
Rating: R21 for homosexual theme
Running Time: 101 mins
Watch the trailer here:
