Department store clerk Therese (Rooney Mara) has a chance encounter with Carol (Cate Blanchett) in 1950s New York. Carol's a repressed lesbian married to boorish Harge (Kyle Chandler); Therese, ambivalent towards romance, falls for her. Therese extracts herself from a loveless engagement to Richard (Jake Lacy) while pursuing photography; Carol's threatened with divorce and loss of child custody. They start seeing each other, culminating in an ill-fated road trip where love and tragedy intersect.
Carol draws on Patricia Highsmith's novel The Price of Salt. Haynes eschews Far from Heaven's faux-Douglas Sirk: Carol more conventionally states its setting with period songs and Dwight Eisenhower appearances. But Haynes bursts through '50s conformity with delectable imagery; Carol and Therese's faces reflected in smudged mirrors, a dreamlike drive with sound muted and images blurred as Therese contemplates her future.
Phyllis Nagy's script skews classical melodrama, with its flawed protagonists headed towards tragedy. Carol's marriage is a sham to maintain respectability, where Therese fends off overzealous male suitors. As Carol fights to keep custody of her daughter; her homosexuality becomes crucial evidence against her. Therese develops her photographic skills but lacks the confidence to pull them off. They lack closeted angst: Carol and Therese accept their identities with little difficulty, though society shuns them.
There's value in that, and Carol handles their romance with sensitivity. But its mixture of easy villains and bum dramatic notes takes a toll. Where Haynes sympathizes with Julianne Moore's crumbling marriage in Heaven, he extends Harge only contempt; he's a boorish bully who abuses and stalks his wife. There's a second act denouement with a detective and a revolver that fizzles, while Carol and Therese's later interactions seem anticlimactic rather than heart-wrenching. Even so, points for avoiding an obvious end tragedy.
Carol's trump cards are its leading ladies. Rarely has Cate Blanchett's unique screen presence been better employed; her smoky voice, angular sensuality and fierce intelligence make Carol a compelling character. Rooney Mara is a far cry from her edgy turns in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and Side Effects. Sporting an Audrey Hepburn pixie cut, endearingly doe-eyed, Mara matches Blanchett's wariness with detached passion, ambition and wit. Here's hoping one, or both of these ladies nabs an Oscar statuette.
Some critics complain that Carol's being snubbed by the Academy. But it really isn't Best Picture material; tasteful and square to a fault, it lacks the urgency or poignancy of a genuinely great movie.