Carol (2015)

☆ ☆ ☆

Carol (2015) – T. Haynes

Stately and slow drama from Todd Haynes, set in the early 1950s and looking gorgeous.  It is in fact an exquisitely realized “coming of age” story or perhaps I should say a “coming out” story except the two women here are only barely out of the closet and even so they experience a world of stigma and discrimination.  Cate Blanchett transforms herself (again) and provides a subtle portrait of a wealthy older woman who risks losing her four-year-old daughter in order to live an authentic life and to love who she wants.  Rooney Mara is the younger woman awakening to the possibility of same sex attraction. The script provides breathing room for the development of their affair but it does move very slowly, probably too slowly.  The fact that the law allowed a “morality clause” to be used to prevent LGBT parents to have custody of their own children is shocking but it is downplayed here in favour of the relationship dynamics.  Haynes has often been seen in the light of his fondness for Douglas Sirk (similarly to Rainer Werner Fassbinder) but here he seems to avoid the amplified melodrama of these masters, perhaps to make certain the characters and issues are treated seriously and not with any distortion or campiness. From an autobiographical tale by Patricia Highsmith.