“‘How is it you live alone?’ the woman asked, and before Therese knew it, she had told the woman her life story.
But not in tedious detail. In six sentences, as if it all mattered less to her than a story she had read somewhere. And what did the facts matter after all, whether her mother was French or English or Hungarian, or if her father had been an Irish painter, or a Czechoslovakian lawyer, whether he had been successful or not, or whether her mother had presented her to the Order of St. Margaret as a troublesome, bawling infant, or as a troublesome, melancholy eight-year-old? Or whether she had been happy there. Because she was happy now, starting today. She had no need of parents or background.
‘What could be duller than past history!’ Therese said, smiling.
‘Maybe futures that won’t have any history.’
Therese did not ponder it. It was right. She was still smiling, as if she had just learned how to smile and did not know how to stop.”
Patricia Highsmith, The Price of Salt

Because of the time and circumstances of their world, Therese and Carol have to very carefully navigate their relationship. A lot remains unspoken out of fear and unknown, so small moments of physical contact become big moments. Todd Haynes uses this, making sure that the weight of each of these moments are very present in the film, which allows the moments to not only progress the relationship of Carol and Therese, but they become visual progression of the story in the film, telling the audience much more than dialogue could in such little time.

Carol (2015) dir. Todd Haynes

Carol Aird + cigarettes 

What a strange girl you are.

Carol | 2015 | dir. Todd Haynes

#Who is NOT Therese though? #Smell her neck and then pound back that drink because HOLY CRAP LESBIANNNNNN