Carol

Seen at the lovely 1930s Empire cinema in Bowral, NSW

Cecil says: Lesbian love in the 1950s. Starring Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara. With its slow build-up and sense of forbidden feelings about it, this film had as much the feel of Brief Encounter as anything else more recent.

I actually liked it less than I thought I would. There was something about the relationship that didn't ring true for me, and it was more to do with social class than gender or sexuality. How likely was it that women from such different social backgrounds would be attracted? What actually attracted them to each other? From the way the characters developed (or didn't), you'd be excused for thinking the attraction was based purely on lust or physical attraction, though perhaps I'm being unfair and wouldn't judge a film portraying a heterosexual relationship in the same way. I'm not sure.

Cate Blanchett's character Carol was not attractive, that's for sure: very much the lead in the relationship with the come-ons and not so subtle hints about where they might go next. But she was also the person with more to lose, in a conventional way of looking at life, as she had the lady-of-leisure, kept woman lifestyle. Was it well acted by Blanchett, so we are not supposed to like her, or was it actually mis-cast?

Therese was the one who started with nothing, serving on the counter in a department store, wearing bohemian clothes with great style. But we didn't really learn much about her background, her family, her loves (except that she had played with train sets as a little girl).

I did like the 1950s setting, though: the cars, the clothes, the shops. And this was early 1950s so really not far into the great consumer society and the 'never had it so good' world.

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Bea says: 

I liked this more than Cecil did, unexpectedly so, as after reading a couple of reviews and seeing some trailers of it I felt ambivalent about the older woman/younger woman relationship and, like Cecil, could immediately see in those trailers that the Carol character was rather unlikeable.

What I didn't expect, and what really made me enjoy the film, was relating so much to Therese - the younger character.  Therese's young life in the city reminded me - nostalgically - of my own young life in my early years of living in London.  The first few years I was there I lived alone in a staff accommodation bedsit-type set up, and it seems the mid 1990s was remarkably not unlike the 1950s.

I too made and received emotionally laden phone calls from the corridor phone.  I too had young men calling, both on the phone and in person (although unlike Therese I didn't have older women calling - however, for me this film was rather more about first "love" than it was a lesbian relationship).  I too have had the experience of spending a Sunday (which can be a long, lonely and quiet day when you have no family and only new, not well-established friends in a big city) with a new love, and having all go rather wrong and have ended up crying all the way home to my depressing, empty bedsit and the prospect of a working week to come.

I did not like the character of Carol - and like Cecil am not sure if this was an intentional device from the director or not.  Not liking the main character of a film can make it difficult to care what happens as the plot progresses.  Blanchett seemed to play Carol in a removed way, as if observing from a distance, so it was hard to get under the skin of the character.  As a result, I enjoyed Mara's performance much more, and like Cecil loved the costuming and styling, although I thought the stylist borrowed much too heavily from Audrey Hepburn in their styling of Therese - at least one of the outfits (the tartan pinafore), if I am not wrong, is a dead ringer for something Hepburn wears in one of her films.

And, if I'm not mistaken, one of the final scenes in which Mara walks through New York on a misty evening and hails a taxi is quite a lot like the one of the final scenes of Breakfast at Tiffany's.  Not a bad thing to do, just derivative.  Now, I haven't read the book nor checked to see if Breakfast at Tiffany's is an influence or reference-point for the book, or whether it was just that the plotline of the young ingénue in the city reminded the styling and directorial team of the film.

If you like Audrey Hepburn, Breakfast at Tiffany's, vintage styling or if you've ever lived alone in a city as a young person and made your way in the world from there, you might enjoy this film.

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