Carol (2015)

CAROL  (2015)  ¢ ¢ ¢
    D: Todd Haynes
    Cate Blanchett, Rooney Mara, Kyle Chandler,
    Jake Lacy, Sarah Paulson, John Magaro
To begin with, Rooney Mara in this movie looks more like Audrey Hepburn than any actress who's not Audrey Hepburn has a right to look. In some shots, she's a dead ringer. It's spooky. Mara plays a young woman named Therese, an aspiring photographer who's working the Christmas season in a department store when she meets Carol (Cate Blanchett). It's love at first sight for both of them, if the meaningful glances they exchange are any indication, but Carol's got a daughter and a soon-to-be-ex-husband, and this is the 1950s, so it's complicated. It's the acting of the two leads that carries this one. As melodrama it's a little obvious, but it's not hard to imagine two women looking like Blanchett and Mara being attracted to each other. One's cool, elegant, affluent and smokes like she really means it. The other could've wandered over from the set of "Funny Face" or "Love In the Afternoon". And come to think of it, Blanchett played Katharine Hepburn in a movie once, too.