Carol (2015)
August 30, 2015 7:48 PM - Subscribe
Set in 1950s New York, a department-store clerk who dreams of a better life falls for an older, married woman.
The Guardian (Peter Bradshaw): "Todd Haynes’s Carol is an amour fou which plays out with sanity and generosity: it is a superbly realised companion piece to his 50s Sirkian drama Far From Heaven and an overt homage to Lean’s Brief Encounter. The film is based on Patricia Highsmith’s 1952 novel The Price of Salt, about the love affair between a virginal shopgirl and the beautiful older married woman that she serves in the pre-Christmas rush in a Manhattan department-store: they are played here by Rooney Mara and Cate Blanchett. Just occasionally, along with the classic echoes, Carol has the obsessive frisson of Nic Roeg’s Bad Timing and – with the flourishing of a revolver – Haynes conjures a fraught kind of Nabokovian despair and futile melodrama."
The Telegraph (Tim Robey):
"Carol is gorgeous, gently groundbreaking, and might be the saddest thing you’ll ever see. More than hugely accomplished cinema, it’s an exquisite work of American art, rippling with a very specific mid-century melancholy, understanding love as the riskiest but most necessary gamble in anyone’s experience.
"It’s hard to imagine a director handling this project more surely than Todd Haynes, a supreme chronicler of feminine emotional pain - from Safe through Far From Heaven and Mildred Pierce - who reasserts his status here as one of the greats."
Director Todd Haynes is also famously responsible for the short, Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story (1987), which was 'acted' entirely using Barbie dolls, and was created when he was an MFA student at Bard College.
Links
Cate Blanchett & Rooney Mara on Their Sex Scene in 'Carol' - Live From Cannes 2015
StudioCanal's movie trailer
The Guardian (Peter Bradshaw): "Todd Haynes’s Carol is an amour fou which plays out with sanity and generosity: it is a superbly realised companion piece to his 50s Sirkian drama Far From Heaven and an overt homage to Lean’s Brief Encounter. The film is based on Patricia Highsmith’s 1952 novel The Price of Salt, about the love affair between a virginal shopgirl and the beautiful older married woman that she serves in the pre-Christmas rush in a Manhattan department-store: they are played here by Rooney Mara and Cate Blanchett. Just occasionally, along with the classic echoes, Carol has the obsessive frisson of Nic Roeg’s Bad Timing and – with the flourishing of a revolver – Haynes conjures a fraught kind of Nabokovian despair and futile melodrama."
The Telegraph (Tim Robey):
"Carol is gorgeous, gently groundbreaking, and might be the saddest thing you’ll ever see. More than hugely accomplished cinema, it’s an exquisite work of American art, rippling with a very specific mid-century melancholy, understanding love as the riskiest but most necessary gamble in anyone’s experience.
"It’s hard to imagine a director handling this project more surely than Todd Haynes, a supreme chronicler of feminine emotional pain - from Safe through Far From Heaven and Mildred Pierce - who reasserts his status here as one of the greats."
Director Todd Haynes is also famously responsible for the short, Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story (1987), which was 'acted' entirely using Barbie dolls, and was created when he was an MFA student at Bard College.
Links
Cate Blanchett & Rooney Mara on Their Sex Scene in 'Carol' - Live From Cannes 2015
StudioCanal's movie trailer
This post was deleted for the following reason: Probably better to repost this once the film has actually seen wide release. -- cortex
Oh hey! Part of this was shot at a restaurant on Main Street in my hometown, Hamilton, OH.
posted by Strange Interlude at 4:17 PM on September 1, 2015
posted by Strange Interlude at 4:17 PM on September 1, 2015
Yeah, it's not being released in the US in even a limited way until November 20th. jcifa, how did you see it? Are you at Telluride or something?
I'm not one for deletions, but I think this post does the film a disservice by being way too early for almost anyone in the world to have seen it to discuss, and hope the mods allow another post in November when it gets its official release date.
That said, the reviews for this have been off the hook; I'm trying to keep my expectations in check but stuff like this Variety gush about how "magnificently realized" the film is aren't helping (don't read past the first paragraph if you don't want spoilers):
...even high expectations don’t quite prepare you for the startling impact of “Carol,” an exquisitely drawn, deeply felt love story that teases out every shadow and nuance of its characters’ inner lives with supreme intelligence, breathtaking poise and filmmaking craft of the most sophisticated yet accessible order.
posted by mediareport at 6:29 PM on September 7, 2015
I'm not one for deletions, but I think this post does the film a disservice by being way too early for almost anyone in the world to have seen it to discuss, and hope the mods allow another post in November when it gets its official release date.
That said, the reviews for this have been off the hook; I'm trying to keep my expectations in check but stuff like this Variety gush about how "magnificently realized" the film is aren't helping (don't read past the first paragraph if you don't want spoilers):
...even high expectations don’t quite prepare you for the startling impact of “Carol,” an exquisitely drawn, deeply felt love story that teases out every shadow and nuance of its characters’ inner lives with supreme intelligence, breathtaking poise and filmmaking craft of the most sophisticated yet accessible order.
posted by mediareport at 6:29 PM on September 7, 2015
Yeah, noting in the thread itself just for visibility here that if this isn't going to see wide release for a couple months yet it's probably best not to post until then, when lots of folks will have had a chance to see it, so I'm gonna go ahead an nix this one for now.
posted by cortex at 11:15 AM on September 9, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by cortex at 11:15 AM on September 9, 2015 [1 favorite]
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by lunch at 12:46 PM on August 31, 2015