Film at Wahnfried - CAROL

At Wahnfried, McGregor
On Friday 24th at 4pm: Todd Haynes’ wonderful historical romance film CAROL (2h) starring Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara. One of my favourite films and highly recommended!

The film received many accolades, including five Golden Globe Award nominations, six Academy Award nominations, and nine BAFTA Award nominations; as well as five Dorian Awards and awards from the New York Film Critics Circle, Los Angeles Film Critics Association, and National Society of Film Critics. It was featured in several "best of" film lists and was ranked by the British Film Institute as the best LGBT film of all time. It was also named one of the greatest films of the 21st Century by the BBC.

In an adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's seminal novel The Price of Salt, CAROL follows two women from very different backgrounds who find themselves in an unexpected love affair in 1950s New York. As conventional norms of the time challenge their undeniable attraction, an honest story emerges to reveal the resilience of the heart in the face of change. A young woman in her 20s, Therese Belivet is a clerk working in a Manhattan department store and dreaming of a more fulfilling life when she meets Carol, an alluring woman trapped in a loveless, convenient marriage. As an immediate connection sparks between them, the innocence of their first encounter dims and their connection deepens. While Carol breaks free from the confines of marriage, her husband begins to question her competence as a mother as her involvement with Therese and close relationship with her best friend Abby come to light.

Carol received a ten-minute standing ovation at its Cannes Film Festival international press screening and premiere. Critics praised Haynes's direction, Blanchett's and Mara's performances, the cinematography, costumes and musical score, and deemed it a strong contender for a Cannes award. On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a 94% rating. The website's critical consensus states: "Shaped by Todd Haynes' deft direction and powered by a strong cast led by Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara, Carol lives up to its groundbreaking source material." Carol was named the best-reviewed romance film of 2015 in Rotten Tomatoes' annual Golden Tomato Awards.

Kate Stables wrote in Sight & Sound: "Elegant restraint is the film's watchword ... In this enjoyably deliberate film, each shot and scene is carefully composed to pay homage to 50s cinema, yet infused with an emotional ambiguity which feels decidedly contemporary." Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times wrote that it is "a serious melodrama about the geometry of desire, a dreamy example of heightened reality that fully engages emotions despite the exact calculations with which it's been made... Carol's lush but controlled visual look is completely intoxicating. This is filmmaking done by masters, an experience to savour." A. O. Scott wrote in The New York Times: "At once ardent and analytical, cerebral and swooning, Carol is a study in human magnetism, in the physics and optics of eros. With sparse dialogue and restrained drama, the film is a symphony of angles and glances, of colours and shadows." Amy Taubin from Film Comment wrote: "The narrative, precisely chiselled by Phyllis Nagy from the ungainly novel, is deceptively simple ... What's remarkable about Carol is that it seems to exist entirely in the present moment—to be precise, in that electric, elastic, heart-stopping/heart-racing present of romantic desire. It is a film composed of gestures and glances, its delicacy a veiled promise of abandon. And it could not exist without the extraordinary performances of Blanchett and Mara." David Stratton of The Australian wrote: "The meeting of these two women is an electrifying scene; their eyes make contact, and nothing of significance is said, apart from the usual interaction between shopper and shop assistant, but Haynes and his wonderful actors make it very clear that something momentous has occurred - love at first sight."