Carol

In May 2022, I watched Carol for the first time on the television set. The drama film was released in 2015 and directed by Todd Haynes. It is based on the novel with the same tittle written by Patricia Highsmith and published in 1952. The novelist also wrote The Talented Mr. Ridley which was adapted for the French and Italian one Plein Soleil released in 1960 and starring Alain Delon and the American one The Talented Mr. Ripley in 1999 and Matt Damon. The protagonists of the two book are homosexual.

The two leads, Rooney Mara and Cate Blanchett, also costarred in Nightmare Alley as a young cute woman who most men long for and idealize and as a lovely lady hiding a devilish face. I watched the suspense film at a theater last month and then I knew the two actors had acted together in the 2015 one, so I recently viewed it.

It tells the story of Therese, a young cute woman working at a department store and dating with a man, falls in love with Carol, a lovely and elegant lady living with her husband and daughter.

I had not known that it depicts a lesbian romance, so I was puzzled a little when the two women start to love each other, however, I was never upset because I had already watched Booksmart, The Prom and Portrait de la jeune fille en feu, which all did a lesbian one. Then I felt anew that lesbian romances are almost essentially the same as heterosexual ones. I could understand that it needed to show how deeply the two woman fall in love with each other but I was surprised by how vividly it depicts that they are making love with each other at night, though the two actors are really beautiful on the bed.

During watching it, I thought that the director must be a woman because of the depictions of the men who tend to push their ideas against the two women. Although it is a man named Todd Haynes, yet Haynes has come out publicly as a gay. Our society has slightly but gradually changed from a male-dominated one to a gender equality one. I like to be a person with fair eyes so that I can catch up with the times.

The film is a wonderful but kind of painful romance filled with the charms of the two stunners, Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara.