Cert 15
Duration 118 mins
Film starts approximately 21.00
DJ from 18.45: RHYTHM SISTER
Adapted from Patricia Highsmith's once controversial novel, this achingly poignant and visually ravishing romance has all the emotion of classic Hollywood melodrama with the suspicion and suspense of a film noir thriller. A hesitant relationship begins when the sophisticated Carol, a wife and mother in 1950s New York, accidentally leaves her gloves at the department store counter where she's been served by the younger, less worldly, but aspiring artist Therese (Mara). Their outlaw love leads them to dream of an escape from the narrow confines of their everyday lives and the harsh reality of the law, although the pressures of society and family become too powerful to ignore.
Despite being partly an examination of repression, Carol captures the feeling of mutual attraction with pin-sharp, heartbreaking accuracy; a love story that's not just about being in love but which seems to find a way to express that sentiment in virtually every frame and image. Credit director Todd Haynes, writer Phyllis Nagy and producers Elizabeth Karlsen, Tessa Ross and Christine Vachon with bringing the book to the screen so brilliantly, featuring an unexpectedly propulsive narrative, the atmospheric backdrop of New York at Christmas and the always drop-dead gorgeous costumes of Sandy Powell.
A film in which every moving part miraculously seems to fall perfectly into place, this really is a modern masterpiece. Come and fall in love at Somerset House.
