This week I talked with writer-director Phyllis Nagy about her latest screenplay Carol starring Cate Blanchett that recently won the New York Film Critics Circle for Best Screenplay and Best Film. This much anticipated romantic film is an adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's important novel The Price of Salt that endured an eighteen year journey to bring it to the screen. The movie follows two women from very different class backgrounds who find themselves in an unexpected love affair in 1950s New York. As a period piece it's beautifully directed by Todd Haynes who also won New York Film Critics Circle for Best Director along with cinematographer Ed Lachman who won New York Film Critics Circle for Best Cinematography. Carol is an important must-see film especially by our LGBT millennial generation to reflect just how far our community has advanced. Nagy delivers a beautiful and honest story within the conventional norms of the time. The story is about a young woman in her 20s, Therese Belivet (Rooney Mara) who is working as a saleswoman in a Manhattan department store and dreaming of a more fulfilling life when she meets Carol (Cate Blanchett), an alluring woman trapped in a loveless, convenient marriage. As an immediate connection sparks between them, the innocence of their first encounter becomes more challenging as their love deepens. When Carol breaks free from the confines of marriage her husband (Kyle Chandler) begins to question her competence as a mother as her involvement with Therese and her relationship with her best friend Abby (Sarah Paulson) come to light. The refreshing aspect to Carol is that the story is not problematic because the relationship is between two women but instead the characters just have complicated issues like everyone else. I talked to Phyllis about her journey bringing Carol to fruition and her spin on our LGBT issues.
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When asked what her personal commitment is to LGBT civil rights Nagy stated:
I'm an out lesbian, I always have been and I think by leading my life openly as possible and trying to inspire other people to do that and help other people do that, I don't know if there could be a bigger commitment than that, to inspire people not to hide, let's say. When one's creating one's work it's important to include out interesting characters. They don't have to be saints. It's preferable that they're not, but that they are presented as real people with real complexities who are neither burdened by having the weight of centuries of sexual attitudes behind them nor burdened by having to represent every single gay person on earth. Just real honest characters behaving in a world that either accepts them or does not, but how they behave in that space reflects well on them.
Carol is Phyllis Nagy's second film with Number 9 Films and Killer Films. Their first collaboration was the Emmy nominated HBO film Mrs. Harris written and directed by Nagy. Phyllis's stage adaptations and translations have also included Patricia Highsmith's The Talented Mr. Ripley, Chekhov's The Seagull and Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter. Currently she's at work on two new film adaptations of The Trap a novel by Melanie Raabe for TriStar and The Luneburg Variation a novel by Paolo Maurensig for Raindog Films, with Colin Firth attached to star. Carol is now playing in limited release by The Weinstein Company.
For More Info: carolfilm.com
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