Butler's Cinema Scene

Rooney Mara, Cate Blanchett

“CAROL” My rating: B+ 

118 minutes | MPAA rating: R

You could describe “Carol” as a lesbian love story.

More accurately, it’s a love story in which the two main characters are women.

That’s an important difference.

The latest from adventurous indie auteur Todd Haynes is one of his most accessible works, a haunting and quietly erotic tale of love that, far from being forbidden, holds the promise of fulfillment.

Adapted by Haynes from Patricia Highsmith’s 1952 novel The Price of Salt, the film features Oscar-grabbing performances from Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara and perhaps the most realistic evocation of the early 1950s I’ve ever seen in a movie (including movies made in the early 1950s, which somehow seem fantastically unreal).

Therese (Mara) is a quiet young woman who seems to be waiting for something to happen.  Certainly she doesn’t expect much from her job selling toys in a big Manhattan department store during the Christmas season.  She thinks maybe she’d like to try her hand at photography.

Nor does she sense much of a future with Richard (Jake Lacy), the boyfriend who wants to travel with her to France. The two are yet to consummate their relationship (remember, it’s the early 1950s).

Then one day the glamorous, well-heeled Carol (Blanchett) comes into the story to buy a present for her young daughter. The customer and the sales clerk strike up a conversation. Carol leaves her fancy gloves behind and Therese has them delivered to Carol’s posh home in the Jersey ‘burbs.

For this act of kindness Therese receives an invitation to tea. Her fascination with this beautiful and cultured older woman becomes a crush.

But there are issues.  Carol’s well-to-do husband Harge (Kyle Chandler)  is suspicious and protective…understandably since in the past Carol betrayed him with her best friend Abby (Sarah Paulson). Harge has taken her back, but is slowly steaming with the knowledge that she’s sticking around only for the benefit of their daughter.

And before it’s all over the little girl will become a pawn in a battle not only for custody but for control of Carol’s inner life.

While the film doesn’t ignore that Carol’s choice of lovers will have social and legal repercussions, Haynes hasn’t fashioned a story about brave lesbians defying everybody else. Rather, the attraction between the sophisticated Carol and the naive (but eager) Therese is depicted as a natural outcome of who these people are.

Blanchett is superb as a woman torn between motherhood, a pampered lifestyle and her romantic inclinations, while Mara exudes a birdlike intensity, observing and sucking up every bit of information about this marvelously-plumed creature who has entered her life.

Chandler’s history in nice-guy roles (TV’s “Friday Night Lights”) keeps from Herge from becoming just a villain. Nevertheless, the’s a strong subtext here about the efforts of men — even nice one — to control their womenfolk.

This is a film in which the slightest gesture can speak volumes and a flickering eyelid can signal mounting erotic undercurrents.

| Robert W. Butler