You’ll find no film more visually rich and sumptuous looking this season than “Carol.”
But neither man nor woman live on style points alone.
The man of this assessment is Todd Haynes, director of “Far From Haven” made in the trace image of the films of Douglas Sirk whose tear-jerkers were commonly known as women’s dramas but whose subtext was of gay men living in the shadows.
The woman is “The Talented Mr. Ripley” novelist Patricia Highsmith, who wrote the lesbian novel “The Price of Salt,” under a pseudonym and which has been adapted by Haynes.
Like “Far From Heaven” “Carol,” which opens Friday, takes place during the 1950s which Haynes recreates with elegant and delicate brush strokes.
Not just the fashion and styles, though these details are recreated in impeccable detail, but the conservative confines of the era and gender roles imposed on men and women during it.
Cate Blanchett plays a serial lesbian who has previously expressed such feelings that her husband, played by Kyle Chandler, is willing to forgive but that she is unwilling to forget. They are an affluent, elegant pair.
He travels by limousine. She wears furs and drives a convertible top down, her scarf blowing in the wind. He wields his presumptuous sense of gender privilege like a weapon. But her refusal to genuflect before the patriarchy he and his family represents divides them.
When shopping for her daughter she is helped by a shopgirl, played by Rooney Mara, and leaves a glove behind, by accident or design. It’s the oldest trick in the book. Mara is a working class woman of modest means whose boyfriend cannot understand her reluctance to get married. She returns the glove to the older woman and curiosity turns to flirtation turns to slow burning love affair doomed by the mores of the time.
The two women are archetypes cosmetically; Blanchett a Lauren Bacall type and Mara an Audrey Hepburn replica. That the characters more resemble movie stars than real people adds a heightened reality just short of camp. The lush aesthetic of cinematographer Edward Lachman, who worked on “Far From Heaven” and Hayne’s HBO remake of “Mildred Pierce” and Carter Burwel’s haunting score add a sorrowful nostalgia.
While “Carol” is a glimpse of who these women are, it is also a reminder at how far we have come. More tolerant contemporary attitudes toward same-sex relationships inevitably percolate throughout, magnifying their feelings of regret and our feelings of disbelief.
Blanchett has the bitterness of a disappointed woman who knows the score and for whom Mara may be a last chance at happiness, despite their age difference. For Mara longings she vaguely knew she held are awakened. For both there is no turning back. Both are likely Oscar nominees. But the real star is Haynes.
By bringing politically charged gender works into the mainstream Haynes is not only shedding light on subjects that flew under the radar for too long he is helping to reshape the mainstream in the process.
***1/2 Three and one half
With Cate Blanchett, Rooney Mara, Kyle Chandler, Sarah Paulson, John Magaro, Corey Michael Smith.
Produced by Elizabeth Karlsen, Tessa Ross, Christine Vachon, Stephen Wooley.
Written by Phyllis Nagy. Directed by Todd Haynes.
Rated R: sex. Approximate running time: 118 minutes.
Tags: Carol, Cate Blanchett, Edward Lachman, Far From Heaven, Oscar, Rooney Mara, Todd Haynes Posted by