The 1952 novel The Price of Salt is a book that like 12 Years a Slave seems astonishing it took as long as it did to become a full-length feature motion picture. Both were like treasures hidden in plain sight (indeed the process of adapting this radically ahead of it time story of a wealthy socialite divorcing her husband as she finds love with a younger department store girl began over eighteen years ago). What superficially looks at first to be Todd Haynes rehashing his Far From Heaven (still the best film of the last fifteen years) proves to be a very different type of picture—one that doesn’t depict the era through a looking glass and finds a liberatingly unabashed romantic spirit in this story of sexual awakening. Carol is a near-masterpiece with arguably career-peak performances from both Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara. Few movies in recent memory have had such a rapturous ending.
Carol