Carol: Kiss of Fire

Warning: Spoilers.

Carol is an adaptation of the book The Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith, starring the adorable Rooney Mara and stunning Cate Blanchett. It was adapted by Phyllis Nagy, who first wrote the script in 1996 and who won an award for adapting the book at the Alliance of Women Film Journalists awards amongst others, and it is directed by Todd Haynes. It is set in the early 1950s and it follows Mara's character Therese as she works in a department store, admiring their toy trains and it follows her as she instantly falls in love with the eponymous Carol, played by Blanchett. It is a stunning film, with a beautiful score, and brilliantly touching acting. It is a joy to watch but most importantly it's a, sadly rare, treat to watch a film about two women falling in love in a way that is respected, equal to other love stories, and that has a bloody happy ending.

The book was inspired by two things in Highsmith's life, a chance meeting she had similar to the one in the film with a woman when she worked in a department store and a relationship she had with an older woman who, just like Carol, had trouble with her divorce and child custody due to taped hotel room meetings and her sexuality as a lesbian. Highsmith wrote the outline for the book in a couple of hours, driven unbeknownst to her by a chicken pox fever. It's amazing to think that there is now an Oscar nominated film that exists because a beautiful woman inspired a young lesbian author into writing a great book, albeit one that her time was not ready for; it was published under a pseudonym, and it took her 38 years after it was published for her to admit it was her novel. I'm glad that we live in a time that is better for lesbians, though there is still a long way to go. I really hope many young lesbians went to see Carol, on first dates or date nights, and enjoyed getting to see a love like theirs on the big screen – one as respected as any other.

However, before I discuss Carol and Therese I want to discuss the men in the film as their presence is repeatedly one that many women experience: a nuisance. There's Therese's boyfriend, someone who thinks people of the same sex can't fall in love, who thinks the things he does for both of them are done because she demands them when she doesn't, and who acts like his feelings for her should outweigh whatever she feels about anything. Then there's the friend who kisses Therese, the man who investigates them – lies to them and helps shatter Carol's life – and it creates an atmopshere where anytime a man comes on screen you're just waiting for them to ruin things for our two female leads; so true to so many women's lives, so brilliant and infuriating. There's Carol's husband, the man who takes her daughter away from her over his anger at the fact she has feelings for people who aren't him, and that those people are women.

It's his possession of Carol that drives that plot in this film, her need to get away from him and the control he holds over their daughter, the control he tries to exercise over her. His jealousy comes out in anger and luckily for us as viewers it doesn't end in violence; though sadly this is not always true in real life, as lesbians are often killed by entitled men who think it is their right to have any woman and that any woman who not only doesn't want him but any man is a criminal who should be punished, who should be killed. It's understandable that a film set in the 50s would be about this conflict, the punishment lesbians faced due to their sexuality; we haven't come as far as perhaps we like to tell ourselves, with women who love women still being discriminated against simply for that very fact. But with time I hope that films, ones that exist in Hollywood, continue recognising the beauty of lesbian love, but that they show that lesbians lives aren't all about tragedy and male violence and anger but that they are as varied and complicated as the films we have been watching for decades.

Carol is a character that in lesser hands would become a two dimensional object, a beautiful enigmatic woman; she'd become a killer or as we saw in BBC's Sherlock a dominatrix, as happened to Irene Adler – The Woman because she was written in a time where no woman was expected to be capable of anything other than being a wife or a mother. But as she was written by someone with a deep love for women, driven by an infatuation with a passing stranger, and adapted by someone who loved this book so much she wrote the screenplay in 1996 she is a fully realised character who is flawed and human, something that is a lot to ask for in a world that thinks this is a lot to ask for. Carol is a great example too of the effort it takes to look effortless; the stress and emotional strain that it takes to appear to others as though you step out of bed stunning, glide through the streets without a care, and take lovers to bed in a swirl of magic and seduction. Instead she is wrapped in the love she has for her daughter, its cost casts a shadow over her new relationships, and almost ends up driving away a woman who makes her feel like she can truly be herself – something that is often the price of women who love men.

As that's what Therese let's Carol be, utterly herself: she lets her cry, lets her love her, lets her have her space when her world is crashing around her. She tells herself it's because she has no substance, because she lets people walk all over her and she doesn't stand up for herself; she might feel like that's true with her boyfriend but for her and Carol I don't see it that way at all. I think she becomes someone that Carol truly needs, someone who can hold her when she needs it and encourage her to be a human, to be a lesbian, and, when she finally gets the courage to be herself. If this film were about Carol and her husband it would have been a film about a broken women, alone in her own marriage, torn between being true to herself and being a mother and it would have tried to force what other films have: that she should swallow her identity, put her husband's wants first and sacrificed everything for a chance to see her daughter. It almost ends that way, it almost ends with her losing it all but Therese's love for her gives this film a happy ending, or as happy as it could get for two lesbian women in the 1950s.

It's a film you could walk away from hoping that that happy ending lasted, that those women found a way to live happily in a house somewhere, raising her daughter whilst Carol finds her calling in life; whilst Therese becomes a renowned photographer, where her favourite photographs are of Carol and Rindy opening their presents at Christmas. But as is always the bittersweet way with feminism it's worth remembering how cruel history has been to lesbians; how they were only really allowed to be close in public because society has little problem with women being friends in an intimate, non-sexual setting more so than men. It's something that needs to be remembered in feminism as we read texts like The Feminine Mystique – an important text for feminism but one that is marred by a woman believing the society she lived in at that time and putting lesbians and women of colour last. I believe it's so important to acknowledge the struggles our lesbian sisters have, that they bring so much to the world, and that they have problems unique to them and that we can help by being allies to them.

Though I am glad to say that Carol is another brick on the road to a better life for lesbians, a world where film understands women, and those who love them. With more room made for women in films - on the screen and behind the scenes - then we can keeping making more and more great films like Carol, more Hollywood films that are open about women's sexuality, and films that treat women like the people they are. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to read The Price of Salt.