Carol, Joy, and the “Women’s Movie”
“One situation,” said Patricia Highsmith, “maybe one alone—could drive me to murder: family life, togetherness.”
Amen.
No one gets murdered in Carol, but Cate Blanchett, whose menacing, almost hostile features are for once put to the right use, almost pulls the trigger on the spy whose been taping her sex with Rooney Mara.
There’s a nice film-noir feel about the fur coat, the deep pockets, the revolver—and Ms Mara is very Audrey Hepburn.
On the other hand, this is a bit too much of an introduce-the-bourgeoisie-to-lesbian-sex movie, an editor’s movie, jerking us around in time, and I so much prefer it when the style stays out of the way. But that’s what you get with a studio production, and baby, this is expensive! They did a superb job of evoking the early fifties, Eddie Fisher on the soundtrack, but why blow it with twenty-first-century linguistic currency? “These,” says a young man of Therese’s photographs, “are seriously good.” Ouch.
And filter cigarettes, kids, weren’t manufactured until after Eisenhower’s inauguration, and became popular only in the early 60s. Recall Audrey, speaking of Audrey, tearing the filters off in Charade.
Oh well. But Carol is a smooth movie, and gives the feeling of passion—in fact I would suggest that passion is smoothness, in any form of entertainment, including life. And the object, if I may use the word, of Carol’s lust is nice and quiet. Withdrawn. Shy. These are enormous advantages. Anyone who’s been involved with very young ladies knows they can talk your ear off.
In the novel she’s nineteen, and a theatre set designer, not a photographer. In the novel she sends Carol a Christmas card; in the movie Carol forgets her gloves—which is better. In the novel the toy for Carol’s daughter is a doll; here it’s a train. In the novel it’s a toney British actress Therese almost goes home with at the end; here it’s someone whose voice we don’t hear. This is all Wikipedia stuff—I haven’t read the book, avid consumer of Highsmith though I am. (See my review of The Two Faces of January.)
The director, Todd Haynes, doesn’t usually make the kind of thing I go out of my way to see, but he showed himself adept at the Women’s Movie in Far from Heaven. I suppose the most famous example of the genre is Gone with the Wind, the girl growing up, getting burned by love, by life, learning, taking over. Douglas Sirk is the master, though Joseph von Sternberg is in the running, and Sirk’s Imitation of Life may be the best of all Women’s Movies.
I don’t know why Mae West’s films aren’t regarded as Women’s Movies—certainly she has it all her own way. “Sex is like bridge. If you don't have a good partner, you'd better have a good hand.” Scarlet too flirts with carnality when her morning-after smile tells us she has enjoyed being raped by Rhett, and is annoyed to petulance that he’s leaving.
“I just had sex with them,” Therese’s boyfriend tells her; “I love you!” This may be the defining issue. Go ahead and draw the line.
(For more on this, see the review of Fifty Shades of Grey, below, and, overleaf, thereview of Kingsman.)
Carol, however, is not a Women’s Movie. It’s a Men’s Movie. Men love lesbian films—I’m working on one myself—and Highsmith, who stood whenever a woman entered the room, felt herself a man.
Joy, we may say with confidence, is a Women’s Movie, though not in a league with the ones I've mentioned. It’s a remake (perhaps it doesn't know that) of the 1959 comedy It Happened to Jane, in which the delightful Doris Day is the businesswoman, young Jack Lemmon is the subservient male, and Ernie Kovaks is the creep who tries to ruin her business—all of them vivid performances.
Because you notice in Joy that you immediately know who the bad guys are—they just look bad. This is marvelous in the earlier film because it’s a comedy; but Joy takes itself seriously, and expects us to.
The grandmother, who tells the story after she dies (likeSunset Blvd. or the Anthony Perkins character in The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean—and yet not like them at all), recalls all those people on Twitter who want to “coach” you. A frightening number of people on Twitter want to “coach” you. So does Granny. Don’t worry, you can do it. Very New Age.
And it’s a weepy. I teared up when the woman cried at the end. Makes you hate yourself.
(Don’t expect me to be fair to Joy—I have an allergy to Robert De Niro movies.)
Pleasure in such films depends on your heart being in the right place, as mine is not. Neither is Highsmith’s. That’s what I like about her.
