Carol

Carol

Hi everybody, Mary here.

So,since I needed a little gay fix, I was looking for a good lesbian movie to watch.

It was only thanks to Tumblr and the "Harold, they're lesbians" meme that I heard of the movie entitled Carol, directed by Todd Haynes and featuring Rooney Mara and Cate Blanchett.

So, I decided to watch it, by curiosity.

When I read the synopsis and saw that it involved (and what a cliché) a blonde woman, married to a man she doesn't love, having an affair to a brunette who's a little bit too stubborn for this world, I was a little bit put off. But still, I was little bit surprised by the actual movie, in a good way. I actually very much enjoyed it, in the end.

What I really appreciated in it, are a couple points that were a little bit refreshing, because you know, when you watch a lesbian movie (especially when made by men, but this was the adaptation of a book entitled The Price Of Salt, by Patricia Highsmith under the pseudonym Claire Morgan), is the absurd ton of clichés and the fact that most lesbian movies, when made by men, are made by the male gaze, for the male gaze. A sort of enhanced porn with a little bit of plot and angst, I suppose.

Which is the reason for which I was a little bit apprehensive before watching it, even I loved it, in the end.

If you love past the very first forty-five minutes of very awkward conversations between Thérèse, a cute brunette working in retail, and Carol, a rich woman who's about to divorce and who's trying to have the shared custody of her child with her ex-husband, and if you're patient enough to wait an hour and fifteen minutes until they have the first gay interaction (I know I didn't), then you can appreciate the angst of two women in the fifties who love each other despite the blatant sexism and the fact that being gay, during the fifties, is still seen as a mental illness that should be solved through a stay in a psychiatric ward.

You can also appreciate the naïveté of Thérèse, a young woman who doesn't know where she's going, but who finds love in the places where she wasn't necessarily looking for. You can appreciate her line about love being love, between two people, regardless of gender, because this is love, queer or not.

You can appreciate Carol, a woman who's trying to keep her daughter despite having a (I believe) previous affair with her best friends she's known since they were ten years old, and that she had to give up in order to keep her daughter with her, and her courage when she says that in the end, her ex-husband should have full custody of their child, granted that she has frequent and regular visits, and her bold statement that she loves Thérèse and that she will never give up on her like she did with Ally, and that she couldn't change her gay identity.

You can appreciate the fact that Thérèse didn't give up on Carol when she told her not to contact her, and that she took her time before going back to see her, and that in the end, she did because Carol had done everything for her. And that in the end, they'll be happy. Thérèse has her dream job, Carol will probably have one, but she has a very beautiful girlfriend, they have each other, and it changes from the stereotypical ending of lesbian movies.

Because, you know, the book was written in 1952, when it was the era of "lesbian pulp fiction", which meant stories before gay rights were even a thing, and it was usuall this kind of story, a married woman cheating on her husband with another one. A blonde and a brunette sinning in the middle of the night. No good endings allowed, it was either one of the women finding our how "wrong" she was (usually the married one) and going back to her hetero life, breaking up with her girlfriend of one night, or one of the women dying (generally the non-married one who has the cliché of having little to no family and/or friends, which means that no one would care about her anyways).

Well, maybe the movie was changed from the original book, or it was really a precursor for gay rights and an actual story about finding love and not giving a f*ck about patriarchy or heteronormativity.

A good watch then, if you appreciate very angsty and powerful, deep romance between two women.

Alright, this is it for today, and I'll see you soon with a new post, I hope.

And as usual, our last word : KIDNEYS !