By Rebecca Ford. Ripley , the film, to be distributed stateside by The Weinstein Co. All of her books are inside the mind of a festering-criminal central character.
The mind of a lover is overactive and overheated, completely conjuring scenarios and run-ins. The almost pathological paranoia that is usually defined as criminal is, in this case, romantic — and I love that. So even before it became a story about lesbian love — which was, of course, criminal, as defined by the world at that time — it was just about love itself as something criminal. The project had been in development for a decade before you became involved. How did that happen? She mentioned this one that was in the works with Cate attached to it, called Carol.
Liz Karlsen had been developing it. I want in. I loved what Phyllis Nagy had done with the screenplay. And, of course, the opportunity to work with Cate and Sandy was too much to turn down. Do you view it as a companion to Far From Heaven , which also explores social mores of the s? I did not, for so many reasons. This s [in Carol ] is right on the cusp of the Eisenhower era, but it really speaks to that transitional period between World War?
II and Eisenhower. McCarthyism was at its peak, and America was really, in a sense, in retreat from the advances of the Soviet Union and feeling particularly paranoid. There was a sort of deep freeze, and it felt really cold. Carol is so distorted by point-of-view. I looked at photojournalism and art photography from this early period, a lot of which was lensed by female photographers: Ruth Orkin , Esther Bubley , Helen Levitt , Vivian Maier were all active.
In our story, Therese is a photographer, not an aspiring stage designer [like in the novel]. So that felt relevant. Brief Encounter , the David Lean — Noel Coward film, people who know that film might recognize a little structural homage to it in the way we restructured Carol. I wanted to see how they covered all those car scenes in The Sugarland Express , which I think is a beautifully shot film. What challenges did you face in creating a period film about a period not that far removed in time, just 60 years ago, even though attitudes toward homosexuality have changed dramatically since then?
