Thereâs a key motif in Carol that comes every now and again as a portal to the moment of trauma, to the snapshot that one sees even when their eyelids are shut (this self-inflicted darkness that allows the same bright image to print and print again, 24 times every second, in loop, and that haunts every latecomer who canât help but carry a movie theater inside their skull). This portal is in fact a window, more precisely, a car window, framing Therese Belivetâs (Rooney Mara, who canât avoid the facial features of Audrey Hepburn, in another layer of self-reflexivity in a film full of them) face as she looks outside, through the prismatic distortion caused by the raindrops that accumulate on the glass, acting like wormholes to a different time and place. It is through this window that an image corrupted from the past is reassembled, but when we speak of the past, here, it encompasses more than what happened in the diegetic world, before the movie started. In fact, in Carol, the line between the world of the film and the world of film is also seen through this rain drop-covered window, rendering it uneven, distorted and imprecise (a line full of peaks and valleys, like the print made by a heartbeat monitor). Even still, this moment, shattered in parts that flow inside each of those tiny beads of water, is remarkably vibrant and alive. Hell, itâs even acquired colors, painted over the black and white base by years of romanticized recollection⊠(x)
Carol (Dir. Todd Haynes)