Review of Carol, directed by Todd Haynes

I’m not sure what compelled me to turn on Carol one morning, but, somehow, in the depths of my Netflix I was doom scrolling and landed on this one at eight in the morning. I was due to go to work at ten am, but I sat in bed and watched all of the movie until it was time to get up, get dressed, eat a yogurt, and leave.

I had never heard of this movie before, and didn’t even read the plot beforehand. I just saw it was set in the fifties and had Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara. I’d recently watched Women Talking and Tar, and while I could not watch and finish Tar for the life of me, I was still impressed by both women’s performances in their respective movies.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, was how I ended up cackling once I realized this very much was an LGBTQIA+ movie and never realized it beforehand.

Onwards with the review!

An aspiring photographer working in a department store crosses paths with an older woman getting a divorce.

Although Cate Blanchett’s character, Carol, is the name of the movie, I would say Mara is more of the protagonist, although the camera does shift at times to Carol to see how she’s struggling with her husband and the inevitable divorce coming their way. Mara portrays Therese, who works at a department store during the day in New York.

She wants to become a photographer, but because she’s a woman in the fifties, she really hasn’t had that outlet to explore yet. Her boyfriend, Richard, is pressuring her to go to France with him and is planning the trip, and the obvious presumption here is that he’s planning on them getting married and this might actually be the engagement trip.

One day when Therese is working the counter, she runs into a woman with a fur coat, Carol. She’s looking for a Christmas gift for her daughter, and the two have a decent conversation before Carol leaves, conveniently forgetting her gloves on the counter in the process.

Therese ends up finding Carol’s name in the book and calls her, telling her about the gloves, and Carol invites Therese over to her home. She lives in New Jersey with her husband and daughter, and her husband is clearly controlling in the few glimpses we get of him. Carol cares about her daughter a lot, but it becomes evident that she is going to be used as a pawn in the pending divorce.

At the same time, a friend of Therese’s, Danny, tries to talk to her about her photography but ends up trying to romantically approach her, despite knowing her boyfriend and the fact that Therese probably isn’t interested him in the same way.

When Therese comes to Carol’s home, she witnesses a fight between her husband and she, and thus begins the rabbit hole that is their relationship. Immediately Richard begins to pick up on the fact that Therese might have a crush on Carol, and she denies it. The last straw is when

Therese decides to on a trip with Carol instead of going to Paris with Richard, which is honestly kind of shitty considering he probably already bought all the tickets, and he storms out in anger, telling her that the relationship between them is going to end.

Carol sends Therese a Christmas gift of a Canon camera before this, and it is revealed that Carol’s husband is trying to demean her in court with a morality clause.

Because he’s claiming she’s a homosexual, he’s trying to claim responsibility for their daughter and prevent Carol from visiting her. Therese and Carol end up going on a road trip, where they meet a traveling salesman, and have sex in the various bedrooms throughout their little car journey. As it turns out, the traveling salesman bugged their room and has been hired by Carol’s husband, and he now has the evidence to take to court that she’s gay.

Thus Carol begins to avoid Therese when they return home. During their trip, Therese took many photos of Carol, and she shows Danny the images. That lands her a job at The New York Times, and Therese is able to get her foot in the door that way.

Carol ends up cracking during a meeting with her husband, agrees to give up the guardianship and custody of her daughter, and after time away from Therese, returns to her. And that’s the movie!

Overall Thoughts

This is a movie that has a charm that lies in its nuance. Mara and Blanchett are actually a big part of that nuance; their performances as Carol and Therese end up making the movie work in the way it does. While it is based on a Patricia Highsmith novel, this film is highly cinematic in nature.

Some might dare to call it boring if they watch a certain brand of popular movies, but there’s a lot of skill and craft tucked into Carol. Set in the fifties, the two women are actively defying the expectations against them, angering the men in their lives in the process.

Only when they are able to accept fully who they are and live within that grain does it all come together, showing that even if they try to run, they’ll come back to each other at the end of the day. What a fascinating little movie this was—I enjoyed it.

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