Carol (15A) *****
Cate Blanchett smoulders like the iconic screen goddess she has become in Todd Haynes’ wonderful, moving period drama. That Rooney Mara matches her scene for scene is the film’s sweet surprise.
Based on Patricia Highsmith’s acclaimed novel The Price of Salt (Highsmith was warned by her publishers to use a pen name for fear of retribution) the story centres on a passionate love affair between two women.
Rooney Mara plays Therese, a young shop assistant and aspiring photographer who forms a friendship, then a relationship, with an older, glamourous socialite. She’s Carol (Cate Blanchett), a woman who seems to survive on cigarettes, vodka martinis and the occasional poached egg.
But this is another era and there are complicating factors. Therese is a virgin with little understanding of her own emerging sexuality.
It’s not as if the supports are in place for her. In early 1950s society, same-sex relationships are misunderstood and frowned upon, and Carol is going through a painful and messy divorce with her husband Harge (Kyle Chandler), who wants custody of their young daughter.
Director Todd Haynes has dealt with repressed sexuality and the pressures of conforming to social norms before, with Julianne Moore in the wonderful Far From Heaven.
This is even more wonderful than that film, with the luscious and beautiful attention to period detail enhancing, rather than drowning, this tender and beautifully acted love story. One of the year’s best.
Bridge of Spies (12A) ***
The reliably good Tom Hanks this account of how a US lawyer was given a dangerous and seemingly impossible task during the Cold War.
He’s James Donovan, a lawyer who invites scorn in his own country when he’s hired to defend an alleged spy, Rudolf Abel (Mark Rylance, terrific), accused of espionage in the US.
It’s a job that brings a public backlash in 1950s/60s America, when a nuclear attack at the hands of the Soviets is widely feared and there’s a deep paranoia and distrust between the two nations.
And he grabs the attention of the authorities, who give him an even greater responsibility - to informally negotiate the release of US army pilot Gary Powers, whose plane has been shot down behind enemy lines, in exchange for the return of Abel.
Spielberg does a good job of bringing time and place to life, although the storytelling and pace feel frustratingly restrained at times, especially given the pedigree of this director.
But where Bridge of Spies excels is in throwing up the moral complexities of what both sides are doing, without ever succumbing to the ‘patriotism’ trap that some films do. Even Donovan, it emerges, has an agenda of his own.
