There's an interesting inaccessibility about Blanchett in the first half that draws you into Therese's infatuation. By nature of the film's structure, the first half is in the perspective of Therese and the second focuses on the perspective of Carol. As Carol, Cate Blanchett challenges her polar opposite and equally excellent work with Haynes as a Bob Dylan incarnation in I'm Not There here.

It's a very restrained film – as there are only two particularly intimate scenes – but the film carries an air of sexual and romantic tension throughout. It doesn't quite breach a documentary-esque style with Edward Lachman's understated and pleasantly grainy cinematography, but it all comes organically and authentically with the elegant fashion of production and costume design and the atmosphere that its cold Christmas setting provides. However, Carol is a film that feels plucked from the New York streets of the 1950s as the aesthetic here is surprisingly naturalistic. His 2002 film Far From Heaven feels plucked from the cinema of the 1950s. Todd Haynes is known for his heightened style that evokes the melodrama of Douglas Sirk, for instance. The film isn't interested in being a courtroom drama though, instead focusing on the blossoming relationship between Rooney Mara's Therese and Cate Blanchett's Carol. The film frames this discrimination in a tangible and legal way, as the titular Carol is accused of a morally indecent lifestyle by her ex-husband in order to win custody of their daughter. In Carol's case, these obstacles are the prejudices of the time and culture they live in.

It's simply a heartfelt and deeply human love story where the principle couple confronts insurmountable odds.

It's an inevitability that Carol will face categorisation as an LGBT film, but that's not the limits of how it should be considered.

Movie the price of salt