Carol (2015)

Cate Blanchett as: Carol Aird

Directed by: Todd Haynes
Selected Cast: Rooney Mara, Sarah Paulson, Kyle Chandler, Jake Lacy, Cory Michael Smith
Written by: Phyllis Nagy (Based on the Patricia Highsmith’s novel The Price of Salt)
Release Year: 2015
Genre: Romance | Drama
MPAA Rating: R

IMDb | Photos | Videos | Official Site

Set in 1950s New York, two women from very different backgrounds find themselves in the throes of love in CAROL. 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 threatens her competence as a mother when Carol’s involvement with Therese and close relationship with her best friend Abby comes to light. As Carol leaves the comfort of home to travel with Therese, an internal journey of self discovery coincides with her new sense of space.

Related Images

View more images at the gallery.

Behind the scenes; FYC/Ad posterRelated Videos

The videos after the trailer are playlists of B-roll, featurettes, Cannes premiere, selected interviews and conversations with the cast and crew, just click on the playlist icon/thumbnails to see the other videos in it.

Quotes from Cate Blanchett

“I think the gift of working on something based on a Patricia Highsmith novel is that the interior life of the characters is so rich — she’s masterful at dealing with characters who acknowledge, in a way, that every adult has a secret.” (Film’s Production Notes)
“Carol is someone who perhaps appears very remote and self-contained and self-possessed, but in a way I think she’s crumbling. She doesn’t fit— neither Carol nor Therese— fit neatly into a social circle or in that time, an underground movement. So I think they’re both ambushed by the intensity of the connection they share with each other. It’s specifically about that other person rather than fitting into a larger group. You risk being out of control and that is all part of the intoxicating thrill.”
“You can’t manufacture [chemistry] that and you hope that the camera captures it.” (E!, November 2015)
On filming the love scenes: “I think taking your clothes off is taking your clothes off. I mean, you take your clothes off psychologically and emotionally… There was a lot of trust on the set between Rooney [Mara] and Todd [Haynes], and Todd and I, and he was very clear about how he wanted to shoot it and what parts he was going to use so we all felt very safe.”
On Rooney Mara: “Rooney plays her acting cards pretty close to her chest, but when she plays her hand, it is breathtaking, beautifully judged, connected and felt.” (New York Times, October 2015)
On the ballroom scene: “When I walked onto the set of the ballroom, I had to pick my jaw up off the floor…it was like an MGM Technicolor moment, and in terms of cinema I felt like I was transported back in time. When Cinderella and the Prince took to the floor to dance, it was profoundly moving.”
On the costumes: “Sandy [Powell] and I drew inspiration from images taken in the 1940s of screen legends like Marlene Dietrich and Joan Crawford—women that we still admire today—who had a tremendous sense of danger and mystery about them, especially the dramatic way they were lit.”
On her favourite costume: “My favorite, well, uh, there was a lot of green my school uniform was green, so I tend not to wear a lot of green in everyday life, and I call that, that dress that I wore at the, um, the ball, the gherkin, you know, that was my least favorite, but everyone seems to like that one. Um, I like the blue one. There’s a scene where the stepmother goes to see the archduke, and yeah, the poppy gloves and, um, uh, and a blue hat. It was sort of, I think for memory, it had a bird on it. I mean, the detail in Sandy’s costumes are just extraordinary.”

Quotes from Others

Todd Haynes:
On the kissing scene in bed after Carol and Therese were caught by the private investigator:
— “In production, this was the first time they did kiss. We shot it before the sex scene. And both actresses will make note of the fact that I didn’t say “cut” for a long time. [Laughs] And they kept going. I was sort of enthralled watching. It was the first time Cate and Rooney made out in front of me. And I couldn’t say “cut.” I didn’t want to put them in an awkward position. I think I ultimately did.
What the two actresses were doing in the scene, because it had such a tragic dimension, was so moving to me that I had a hard time ending. That scene kills me every time I see it. There’s a pained expression in Rooney’s face where you see the weight of implication in where they are in their lives.”
Phyllis Nagy
— “Carol is a love story that depicts how truth is the ultimate tonic. If you’re emotionally truthful to who you are and what you believe in, good things may not happen, but you will become a better person.”
Rooney Mara:
— “Therese is not that grounded — she doesn’t have a home base and is in the middle of figuring out who she wants to be and what she wants her life to look like. Carol really opens her world and her mind to what her life could be like, which helps Therese understand the kind of relationships she wants to have.”
— “I think doing a love scene can be more or less comfortable but that’s just depending on what character you’re playing and who you’re doing it with…I felt very comfortable around Cate.”
On coming back on board the film after passing it the first time:
— “The script and Cate [Blanchett] would have been enough, but Todd [Hayynes] is brilliant, and I wanted to work with him terribly. For me the most important thing is the director. And if the director doesn’t feel like someone I will follow to the ends of the earth, then I just really don’t want to do it.”
On Cate Blanchett:
— “Obviously, playing a character who is just in awe of her [Cate Blanchett] — that part was really easy. To just be watching everything she does and figuring out how you can be that way was pretty much what I was doing anyway.”
— “Therese is very much a reactive character. Much of what I do is in reaction to Carol and you can’t really ask for a better thing to be reacting to than Cate Blanchett.”
On the scene where Carol drives Therese to her home for the first time and they drive under a tunnel:
— “It’s one of the scenes that stood out to me when I saw the film for the first time. It was different from how I imagined it. That scene, more than anything, gives you the feeling of falling in love.”
Sarah Paulson
— “The whole experience was intimidating until we started shooting. Cate Blanchett had just won the Academy Award. When you work with people who you’ve been inspired by — I felt like, ‘I don’t want to be the weak link. There are all these incredible artists here and I don’t want to stand out as the thing that doesn’t belong.’ Slowly with the time spent together those nerves went away and they were replaced very quickly by the phone call I got where Todd Haynes told me he wanted me to learn how to drive a 1949 Packard stick shift. Stick shift! I don’t drive a stick shift in a car today, much less in a tank like that, much less with Cate Blanchett in the passenger’s seat.”
— “I, of course, thought Cate was going to be quite serious, and she is incredibly serious, but we laughed so hard, so much, all the time, that it was really one of the more joyful experiences I’ve had acting with someone. There’s an immediacy to her as an actress. You always have to be ready to go because she’s going to do something kind of magical.
In terms of having to create a history of friendship and Abby’s real dedication and love for Carol, I didn’t have to work hard on that at all, it was an instinctual immediate thing that I had because Cate is so available and open, it was just right there. She didn’t have any of that kind of guarded, movie-star thing where you felt you couldn’t try something in a take without upsetting her. It was very inspiring to me.”
Sandy Powell on Carol’s fur coat:
— “The coat itself fell apart every single day, every single scene. It sort of split and every single day, the poor costumer that looked after Cate — she spent her entire lunch time repairing it every day. It was a nightmare. We kind of knew this when we did the screen test. […] We took a huge risk and I’m glad we did because that image in that color with the coral scarf and hat set her apart.”

Trivia & Facts

Filmed in USA.
The film premiered In Competition at the 68th Cannes Film Festival on 17 May 2015, Rooney Mara won Best Actress.
Cate Blanchett was nominated for Best Actress in a Leading Role, Rooney Mara for Best Actress in a Supporting Role at the Academy Awards, the film received four other nominations in Best Costume Design (Sandy Powell), Best Original Score (Carter Burwell), Best Cinematography (Ed Lachman), and Best Adapted Screenplay (Phyllis Nagy), more accolades here.
Sandy Powell was nominated for Best Costume Design for her work in this film and Cinderella (2015) where Cate Blanchett also starred in.
The Price of Salt was published under the pseudonym, Claire Morgan. It was republished under Patricia Highsmith’s name in 1990.
Patricia Highsmith said that the novel was inspired by a blonde woman in a mink coat who ordered a doll from her while she was working as a salesclerk at Bloomingdales in New York during Christmas of 1948.
Rooney Mara said she was offered the role of Therese Belivet after The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo (2011) but passed on the part. In 2012 during Cannes Film Festival, Mia Wasikowska was announced to play Therese but then had to pull out of the film to do Crimson Peak (2016). Rooney Mara came back on board in 2013.
John Crowley was to direct the film but withdrew due to scheduling conflict, Todd Haynes replaced him.
Cate Blanchett also serves as executive producer in the film through her film company, Dirty Films, with her husband, Andrew Upton.
For scenes where Carol and Therese talk to each other on the phone, Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara are really on the other end of the line to help each other even though they are not required.
Cate Blanchett was in another film based on Patricia Highsmith’s novel, The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), however her character Meredith Logue did not appear in the novel.
The first draft of the screenplay was written by Phyllis Nagy in 1996.
Phyllis Nagy was friends with Patricia Highsmith.
Prior to this film, Todd Haynes and Cate Blanchett worked together in I’m Not There (2007).
These are Todd Haynes’ three favourite scenes in the film: Carol drives Therese to her New Jersey home for the first time; After being caught by a private investigator, Carol calls Therese to her bed where they embrace, but there’s a new element of tragedy in the lovemaking. We then learn the next morning that Carol has left; Carol and Therese’s meeting at the Ritz.
Todd Haynes said that the kissing scene in bed after Carol and Therese were caught by the private investigator was the first scene the shot.
Carol’s fur coat is made from obits of old coats that are all cut up and sewed together to make it in the right color that Sandy Powell wanted for the character.
Editor Affoso Gonçalves said that the initial cut was two and a half hours, and the final cut ended at 118 minutes.
The film is critically acclaimed and has won several awards from different critics group, and has been included in Best 2015 Films lists of several publications.