The story is about two women who get into a relationship while having completely dissimilar backgrounds. One is young and aiming to be a photographer and the other is older in age and facing a hard divorce.
Haynes maintains the film's temperature at a low simmer and expertly brings it to the boil, but while "Carol" builds to a scene of intense eroticism, it's mostly about all the things you can't reach out and touch.
Haynes taps into universal anxieties about love and relationships without ever letting go of the sense of imprisonment that came with being gay in the 1950s.
Everything is so perfectly beautiful in Carol, director Todd Haynes' '50s melodrama, that it more closely resembles a museum diorama than a movie -- until its luminous stars, Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara, breathe life and passion into it.
So enraptured was I by the look of the movie, I was almost able to overlook the fact that we don't actually get a lot of dialogue between the two women.
As a love story this left me unsatisfied, though I enjoyed the lush period trappings and the flattering sense of how enlightened I am compared to people in the 1950s.
The lesbian affair at its heart is rendered with intelligence and care, and if there are speeches to be made, they are happily few, and far more personal than political.
A film for anybody who has ever fallen in and out of love, dealing with hopeless infatuation and the slow transition to the messy reality that all but threatens to burn out the initial spark, Carol is more than just a gorgeously crafted period piece.
