Review of Carol (2015) by Jackie P — 16 Jan 2016

Cate Blanchett is my favorite actress, so it is quite painful for me to not like this film. Yes, the cinematography is stunning. The costumes are stunning. Cate is as beautiful as always, but it seemed as though she had too much Botox and cheek fillers before filming.

The loooooong slow looks were flat, conveying very little information or too difficult to interpret. A little more dialogue would have helped a tremendously. A few plot tricks would have made the movie much more plausible.

For instance, instead of staring blankly at the envelope with the gloves in it, then mailing them, if Rooney Mara's character had taken the train to NJ, mooning all through the ride, then shown up at Carol's door with the gloves, that would have advanced understanding of an attraction between the women a thousand fold.

The fights between Carol and her husband sprang up out of nowhere and nothing. They just appeared as though the script writer was following classroom instructions: "oh, you need to have some conflict here".

Toward the end of the movie, where Carol makes a stand at the lawyer's office is the first time we see Cate Blanchett being the great actress she is. Otherwise, It was just looooooonng, not really smoldering looks.

Like pictures in a magazine. And Rooney Mara's constant pout was tiresome by the end of the movie. The scene where she was attending a party she obviously hated, and appeared to stay for HOURS, was too long.

Surely she would have come into the realization that that's not where she wanted to be and rushed off to Carol much sooner than she did. And that would have added a touch of emotion to the movie, which it was sorely missing.