Carol

In the vote between convention and passion the eyes have it. Carol and Therese both express profound yearning and strength in their looks at each other. 

Therese in her innocence is wide-eyed, Carol powerful, drawn back and appraising. That difference catches the predatory element in Carol’s love and Therese’s various disadvantages in experience and power. 

In contrast to the two women’s emotional looks, a slammed door window frames husband Harge’s angry, violent eye. He has isolated himself, framed himself out of his wife’s emotions and in refusing to let her go imprisoned himself. 

Until Harge threatens to sue for sole custody of their daughter, Carol is confident, wealthy, assured. She dresses elegantly, in expensive style, asserting her blondness even in the fur she flaunts, against the more conventional dark mink of the era. Young Therese dresses trimly, in neat plaids and restrained colours and lines, except for the flourish of her bold,  ballooning tam, which anticipates the courage in her unconventional sexuality. The assigned Santa hat is a brief diminishment which wins her Carol’s first encouragement. By the way, in her gamin look Rooney Mara's Therese recalls Audrey Hepburn in The Children's Hour (1961), which restored playwright Lillian Hellman's original lesbian theme, discreetly changed to a heater premarital affair in the original adaptation, These Three(1936).

As in Far From Heaven Todd Haynes uses a 1950s setting, plot line, and characterization to address a  contemporary tension. Carol has the perfect ‘50s heroine response to life: “Just when it can’t get any worse, you run out of cigarettes.” But all the characters are frozen in the ‘50s confusion between love and desire and all live under the shadow of male-centered sexuality. 

The period setting reminds us that we’re still not entirely free from considering same-sex love a moral issue. Gay lovers have an easier time today but there remains a stubborn prejudice against following one’s heart “against the grain” of social convention.

When Carol accedes to Harge's custody demand she admits two motives. The primary is to give their daughter the best possible life, to minimize her damage by her parents’ conflict. But equally important, she can’t “go against the grain” of her own nature, neither as a mother nor as a sexual being.

That theme raises the film beyond “love story” and certainly beyond “a lesbian love story.” Love, after all, is a nebulous concept. Therese can’t get boyfriend Richard to explain what it is. It’s what he says makes her attraction to him different from the two women he’s already had sex with. (Did i mention that the film is set in the ‘50s?) 

Even when Carol tells Therese she loves her what do we know? Or they? Not much beyond the attraction they immediately had for each other — again, registered in their locked eyes across the enchanted department store. As Carol’s lifelong friend and ex-lover Abby notes, the passion erupts and then “things change.” The ardor once faded, what relationship survives? Confirming the ephemerality of ardor, Therese spots Richard dancing with his new girlfriend at the party.

The film’s main theme then is not lesbian love or even love in general but the related question: how can we determine what we want. As Therese admits, “I don't know what I want. How could I know what I want if I say yes to everything?” 

Of course always saying No is as restrictive as always saying Yes. When she recoils from the Times reporter, Therese says she doesn’t mind his premature kiss but clearly has to leave. From the yes she moves to her first tentative ‘no.’ Two exceptions result from Carol’s influence. The first is when Therese doesn’t wait to say Yes but takes the initiative to advance their relationship from friends to lovers. The second is when the “blossomed” Therese says no to Carol’s invitation to move into her new Manhattan flat. Otherwise Therese doesn’t know what she wants or needs and just goes with the drift. 

Finally Therese manages a yes and a no combined. When she declines another lesbian’s advance at the Village party she accepts her true nature and leaves to say yes to Carol. This time when they lock glances, Carol — at home amid her social and class peers — still finds another level of satisfaction when she sees Therese has returned. But it’s the ‘50s. She can only smile back.

     Both need what the other provides, including a rare intimacy. On the phone after their first break Therese says  “I wanna ask you things, but I’m… I’m not sure that you want that.” Carol, crying, says “Ask me things… Please.” For all her experience and power, Carol needs to be asked because she craves intimacy. She learns from Therese how to determine what she wants by determining, issue by issue, when to say yes and when no.