Carol - 2015 film review

Carol is a highly acclaimed film from last year based on a novel by Patricia Highsmith. The storyline has some elements familiar to Highsmith fans, but it's not a crime story, even though a gun makes an appearance during one tense scene. The book was originally titled The Price of Salt, and Highsmith published it under a pen-name (Claire Morgan) in 1953 after her existing publisher rejected it.

At Christmas time, an aspiring photographer called Therese is working in a department store when she has a brief encounter with an older woman, an elegant customer who is looking for a present for her young daughter. Therese has a boyfriend who wants to marry her, while the customer Carol, is married to a wealthy man who is prepared to use their daughter as a pawn in an increasingly acrimonious custody battle if Carol persists in her determination to end the marriage. The lead roles are taken by Rooney Mara and Cate Blanchettl and they are both superb.

Therese and Carol are drawn to each other, but as their relationship blossoms it becomes increasingly evident that the course of true love is unlikely to run smooth - even when the couple throw caution to the winds and go off together to such not-exactly-exotic locations as Waterloo, Idaho. There are some parallels between this relationship and those between the male protagonists of so many other Highsmith novels, including Strangers on a Train and The Two Faces of January; but there are also important differences.

This very well-made film cast fascinating, if depressing, light on the moral climate of the time. Highsmith wove autobiographical elements into her story, well documented in Andrew Wilson's excellent biography of her, Beautiful Shadow, while anyone intrigued by the account of lesbian life in Fifties America may also like to take a look at Marijane Meaker's Highsmith: A Romance of the Fifties (2003), a memoir about her doomed affair with Highsmith. Meaker's book I found fascinating, although regrettably less than kind abotu her former partner. Highsmith was a troubled woman, clearly very difficult to live with, but truly gifted. Carol is an excellent adaptation of a very good love story - and if you want to know whether it has a happy ending, you'll have to watch it to find out!.

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Forgotten Book - The Blunderer

The Blunderer, by Patricia Highsmith, was first published in 1954. By that time, she had already made her name, with her brilliant debut novel Strangers on a Train. She'd also written, under a pseudonym, a lesbian novel, The Price of Salt, later (wisely, I think) re-titled Carol. A year later she would publish her other great masterpiece, The Talented Mr Ripley. So she was clearly at a very productive and intense stage of her career. And The Blunderer illustrates her strengths pretty well, though it also reveals some of her limitations.

The set-up is, as usual with Highsmith, intriguing. In the first chapter, an unpleasant chap called Kimmel murders his wife, having first taken the precaution of trying to set up an alibi. Attention then shifts to the life of Walter Stackhouse, an affluent, good-looking and personable young lawyer with a rather irritating wife. In due course, the lives of Stackhouse and Kimmel will collide, with devastating results for both of them.

This book begins really well, and I found the central premise fascinating. Unfortunately, I became increasingly irritated with Walter's behaviour. He is a prime example of a Highsmith protagonist who behaves in a manner that is not only self-destructive, but also so obviously so that it is difficult to maintain sympathy with him. The same pattern recurs in books like A Suspension of Mercy and Those Who Walk Away, which I reviewed recently. Highsmith deploys various techniques in her attempt to persuade us to suspend our disbelief. In this early book, I think she is less successful than in the later books. I found my sympathy for Walter draining away, and this diminished my interest in his fate.

That said, Highsmith was an admirably ambitious writer, and even her failures (and this book isn't, in my opinion, really a success) are more interesting than many books where the author is much less daring. More than sixty years after its first appearance, I feel that its prime interest is as an example of a relatively inexperienced novelist grappling with challenges of technique. But this is much more interesting than it may sound. I had very mixed feelings about The Blunderer, but I'm still glad I read it.