coleman spilde’s review published on Letterboxd:
To so many straight people, films depicting LGBTQ+ relationships are slow and dull because they fail to realize that so much of our longing is done in silence. Small glances and brief moments mean the world to us and say so much, something straight people will never understand.
Carol is so beautiful and poignant because Todd Haynes knows exactly what these moments are like and how to depict them exactly as we feel them: with quiet grace and anticipation, burdened but buoyed by a pulsing sensation that our deepest desires may be either rejected or reciprocated. We feel our hearts pounding and our minds racing in these small moments in time—fractions of instances that to the naked eye of a straight person mean absolutely nothing, but to queer people they mean everything.
Carol is a masterpiece.