[GeorgiaMa'am]

I saw Carol last night. It was very beautifully filmed, and the acting was first class. Rooney Mara was completely convincing as a young lesbian developing her first love in the 1950s. The movie does an exceptional job of depicting the subtleties of two lesbian lives in a repressive era.

Visually, this film was gorgeous. The 1950s details, from everyday objects such as cars and furniture, and the costumes, makeup and hair, to places such as roadside motels and The Drake hotel in Chicago were fun to watch for someone like me (I'm a lover of mid-century everything). Therese works in a toy department, and one of the first things that hit me was seeing my old tin doll house. Every scene was like a delicious flashback into my childhood. I was engulfed in this film, as the setting drew me into the parts of the story I was less familiar with, such as a 1950s butch and femme flirting in a NYC record store.

I heard screenwriter Phyllis Nagy on NPR's Fresh Air, and she commented that this story was "extremely forward thinking" at the time Patricia Highsmith wrote the novel. Apparently it was typical for lesbian novels of the time to end with one or both women dying, or ending up in a mental hospital. Carol does have a relatively happy ending, and it made it easier for me to watch, knowing in advance that this would be the case.