Carol
A long way from the Ripley novels which
made her famous (no murders or psychopaths here!), Patricia Highsmith’s 1952 book
‘The Price of Salt’, published perforce under a pseudonym, provides the basic
plot for Carol, a film which explores
the agony and ecstasy of forbidden love, and serves as a reminder of how far
we’ve come from an age when homosexuality was considered a moral transgression.
The film opens with the meeting of two very
different women in the toy department of a Manhattan department store, from
which point we watch the slow burgeoning of their relationship. The older of
the two, Carol Aird, played by Cate Blanchett, is moneyed, confident, at ease
with her sexuality – but trapped in a conventional marriage. The focus of her
attentions is the (much younger) shop girl and amateur photographer Therese
Belivet, played with wide-eyed, elfin innocence by Audrey Hepburn lookalike
Rooney Mara. The story unfolds at a languid pace. On the pretext of thanking her
for the return of a pair of gloves, Carol invites Therese to visit her at home
and then to embark on a road trip in which, as it turns out, more than just
geographical boundaries are crossed. As the film picks up pace, we enter a
vexed world of custody battles and showdowns with private eyes as husband Harge
tries to bring his wife back into the fold and restore some sort of ‘normality’
to his family. Inevitably, he is driven to using daughter Rindy as a bargaining
chip, thus sparking what turns out to be a bitter custody battle. When Carol is
forced to return to New York to fight Harge’s application for full custodial
rights, Therese finds herself cut off from the woman she has come to love and
her attempts to make contact are cruelly thwarted by the older woman. However,
once the dust settles after the custody trial (Carol manages only the
concession of occasional visits), the two women come together again and decide
that they will pursue a life together, come what may.
This happy ending – or at least the promise
of one – was unusual for the time. Most novels of this era featuring homosexual
lovers had a tendency to end in frustration, doom and gloom, even tragedy. So,
was this a satisfying film all round? Well, not entirely. But it was nice to
look at! I think the film’s paper-thin storyline and lack of dramatic tension,
certainly in the first half, are more than compensated for by its brilliantly
captured mood and style, what the Telegraph’s Tim Robey describes as “a smorgasbord
of […] Fifties design”. And it does have undeniably tender moments. Though not
exactly bristling with sexual chemistry, the scene in which the women make love
is sensitively done, while Carol’s genuine pity for her husband and desperate
love for her young daughter both raise the emotional tension several notches. For
some, however, the movie is “relentlessly elegant”, and I would agree that there
are occasions when Blanchett’s acting comes across as stagey. If there is a
pose to be struck, she strikes it, and there are times when the long, lingering
glances become just a touch wearisome!
Overall, I think I would have to agree with
Todd McCarthy’s analysis in the Hollywood Reporter. Carol, he concludes, is “absorbing and beautifully crafted but also a bit studied; you long to feel
some blood in its veins.”
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