Love in any capacity is always a hard thing to manage.

The 2015 romance film “Carol” exhibits the conflicts between forbidden love and managing children.

Depicted from Patricia Highsmith’s novel “The Price of Salt” and taking place during the 1950’s, Therese Belivet (Rooney Mara) meets Carol Aird (Cate Blanchett) while selling her a trainset for Aird’s child, Rindy, played by both Sadie and Kk Heim.

After this first encounter, they begin to establish feelings for each other, but this all takes place in the midst of Aird going through a messy divorce with her husband, Harge Aird (Kyle Chandler). They fight for custody of Rindy, and Harge Aird fights with the idea of losing his wife.

Harge Aird also knows that Carol Aird is a lesbian and does not agree with this, thus interfering with Belivet’s and Carol Aird’s relationship.

The film is so authentic.

Aird’s character is so determined to get what she wants out of Belivet.

Blanchett was a great casting choice. She has such a strong attitude in the film, and her face always gives off this idea that she knows something that we don’t.

Towards the end of the film, things do not turn out the way she wants it to for a brief moment, and her expressions were so captivating. Her somber vocal tones and realistic emotions allow her to have such a stellar acting performance.

Her wardrobe also added to her powerful persona.

Award winning Sandy Powell was the costume designer for the film.

Powell studied what people wore back then by looking at high-fashion magazines including Vogue.

Vanity Fair released an article going into depth about Powell’s fashion choices.

Nonetheless, the costumes were an integral part in allowing the film to make it feel the way it does. By all of the characters having exceptional clothing, everyone has an opulent and sophisticated attitude, which never comes off as rude or narcissistic.

Additionally, by the film being shot on Super 16 mm film, it has such a grainy filter over it, giving it a vintage aesthetic to it.

This was a great movie to be shot on film. Everything meshes together so well, and the judicious cinematography and camera shots gave a sense of class to the film.

Mara’s character was very timid, which fit well.

There was a scene during the film where she was stressing about how she never says “no” to anybody, and her character definitely fits that well.

Belivet is not too much of an emotional person and does not have a lot of expressive scenes, but Mara does a great job in her acting performance as well.

The pacing was a bit slow but kept my interest the entire time, and it never felt too long, even with its two-hour run time.

The story was an interesting one to tell. There were a lot of character relationships to keep up with, but it never felt too complex to keep up with.

Towards the end of the movie there was a reoccurrence of them going back to each other. Belivet insinuated that she did not want to see Aird after she invited her somewhere.

Moments later, we see Belivet rushing to the same restaurant that Aird invited her to. Even with all of the conflicts that they go through and the spontaneous decisions that were made, they still found a way back to each other.

Rate: 4.5/5

Cam’ron Hardy can be reached at cahardy@eiu.edu or 217-581-2812.