This one is another of those entries in the list of the most notable films of last year and won a whole bunch of awards as well. It was also at the center of some controversy due to a perceived snub at the Academy Awards due to its LGBT content and that its two leads are both women. The most surprising thing that I learned about it however is that it’s based on a novel by Patricia Highsmith, who is best known for her Tom Ripley novels and other thrillers.

Therese Belivet is a young girl working in a department store during the Christmas season when Carol Aird, an older, wealthy lady walks in. Therese helps Carol purchase a train set for daughter but when Carol leaves her gloves behind on the counter and Therese sends it back to her, it marks the start of what would be a passionate relationship between the two. At the same time, Therese is considering a marriage proposal from her boyfriend while Carol is in the process of divorcing from her husband who is aware that she is a lesbian. After Carol’s husband decides to apply for sole custody of their daughter and her lawyer advises her to keep her distance until it plays out in court, Carol takes Therese on a road trip together during which time they finally consummate their relationship. As all this takes place in the 1950s, her lesbianism does Carol no favors in her fight to gain custody of her daughter and she finds herself being forced to choose one or the other.

Both Rooney Mara and especially Cate Blanchett have respectable bodies of work but under the direction of Todd Haynes, their performances here lack energy. Though the pair try their best to share significant looks with one another, there’s no chemistry here that I can discern. The transition of Therese’s character from a young woman in a heterosexual relationship with a fiancé to being head over heels in love with Carol is jarringly abrupt. Therese’s passivity and lack of affect makes it almost impossible to tell what she’s thinking, a fact that Carol actually alludes to at one point in the film, so it’s hard for audiences to identify with her. One example of Haynes’ poor directing is the pauses and gaps in their dialogue. Other director uses these moments of silence with great effect, giving the audience just enough so that they can fill in the blank spaces themselves with meaning. Here however the moments fall flat with a dull clunk leaving the audience as clueless as before.

Many critics have come out with praises for this portrayal a lesbian relationship but I wonder how much of this is due to their love for the novel. Whether in terms of passion or capturing the feelings of a young woman as she slowly comes to realize that she is homosexual, this film is far inferior to Blue is the Warmest Color. I also believe that while liberal sensibilities will incline one to welcome this portrayal of lesbianism, the nature of the relationship pushes in the other direction. Carol is the more mature and experienced of the two and apparently has been secure in her homosexuality for some time. Therese is the opposite and her passivity only makes this worse. Naturally Carol is the instigator of the relationship. Her husband suspects that she deliberately left her gloves behind to create a pretext to contact Therese later and it’s not clear that he’s wrong. All the evidence indicates that this is a very unequal relationship between two people have very different levels of power. As events later in the film show, Carol’s best friend and former lover Abby is her real confidante that she trusts to carry out her plans no matter how much passion or lust she may feel for Therese. If they were a man and a woman instead of two woman, I believe that current sensibilities would judge Carol as something of a sexual predator.

I found the cinematography and even the choice of music to be similarly unremarkable even if it has a song I remember from the Fallout 3 soundtrack. As laudable as it is for a major Hollywood film to finally put a lesbian romance front and center, this is sadly just a mediocre effort.