Carol (film)

"Just when you think it can't get any worse, you run out of cigarettes."

"I never looked like that. [to Therese, admiring her nude body]"

"My angel. Flung out of space. [to Therese when they pause to look at each other during sex for the first time]"

"I took what you gave willingly. It's not your fault, Therese."

"Please believe that I would do anything to see you happy. So, I do the only thing I can — I release you. [letter to Therese VO]"

"Now what happened with Therese — I wanted. And I will not deny it."

"I'm no martyr. I have no clue what is best for me. But I do know, and I feel it in my bones, what is best for my daughter. Now, I want visits with her, Harge. I don't care if they're supervised. I just want them to be regular. [puts on coat, preparing to leave attorney's office] There was a time when I would have done almost anything. I would have locked myself away to keep Rindy with me. What use am I to her, to us, if I'm living against my own grain?"

"I just take everything and I don't know anything. And I don't know what I want. How could I when all I ever do is say "Yes" to everything?"

"[calls Carol on the phone] Hello? Carol? [Carol remains silent, struggling with emotions, then hangs up] I miss you. I miss you."

"I never made you — I never asked you for anything. Maybe that's the problem. [to Richard as they break up]"

"In bringing this book [The Price of Salt ] to the screen in his gorgeous new movie "Carol," Todd Haynes has, as filmmakers will, changed a few details, characters and plot points. (Therese is now an aspiring photographer, though still temporarily employed at the doll counter of a department store.) But Mr. Haynes and the screenwriter, Phyllis Nagy, have also done something more radical. In [Patricia] Highsmith's prose, desire is a one-way street. For Mr. Haynes, it's a two-way mirror. At once ardent and analytical, cerebral and swooning, "Carol" is a study in human magnetism, in the physics and optics of eros. With sparse dialogue and restrained drama, the film is a symphony of angles and glances, of colors and shadows. It gives emotional and philosophical weight to what might be a perfectly banal question: What do these women see each in each other?"

"Haynes sets the tone with a brilliant early sequence set in a Manhattan department store just before Christmas. We are in Eisenhower-era America, a time of new affluence and opportunity. This, though, is the Cold War era, too. The irony, very deliberately accentuated by the film-makers, is that US society is as rigidly conformist in its own way as the communist world. "Compliments of the season from the management," the shop workers are told as they are all given identical Santa hats just as the Christmas rush is about to begin. Little details – the near-identical clothes of the women shopping, the Big Brother-style tannoy voice telling customers what to buy – hint at how rigidly behaviour is controlled."

"[Carol] seamlessly evokes the period by paying homage to the great photography of the time. It also creates its own unique cinematic language and pulls the viewer deeper and deeper into a world where something as simple as love comes at a staggering cost. Its delicate and precise exploration of emotion through color and light led us to discuss what it meant to achieve mastery of our craft. [Lachman] is, for us, a master and [Carol] is a masterpiece"

"To date, a queer-themed movie has still never won Best Picture, and those that do receive any kind of recognition prominently feature queer suffering ... The reason that Carol is unique and extraordinary is likewise the exact reason that the Academy didn’t deem it Best Picture-worthy ... The Price Of Salt was a landmark work of LGBT fiction, not just because it was published in 1952 (a time many Americans were unaware lesbians even existed) but because it didn’t punish its star-crossed lovers for their desires ... [the novel] leaves the door open for a happy ending ... What makes stories like the romance portrayed in Carol isn’t the ecstasy of queer agony but that there were real women like Carol Aird and Therese Belivet."

"Cate Blanchett – Carol Aird"

"Rooney Mara – Therese Belivet"

"Sarah Paulson – Abby Gerhard"

"Jake Lacy – Richard Semco"

"John Magaro – Dannie McElroy"

"Cory Michael Smith – Tommy Tucker"

"Carrie Brownstein – Genevieve Cantrell"

"Kevin Crowley – Fred Haymes"

"Nik Pajic – Phil McElroy"

"Kyle Chandler – Harge Aird"