Todd Haynes has delivered an exquisite companion piece to Far From Heaven in this adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s seminal novel The Price of Salt. Carol follows two women from very different backgrounds who find themselves in an unexpected love affair in 1950s New York.

Therese Belivet is a clerk working in a Manhattan department store and dreaming of a more fulfilling life when she meets Carol, an alluring woman trapped in a loveless, convenient marriage. An immediate connection sparks between them and as their relationship deepens an honest story emerges to reveal the resilience of the heart in the face of change. The film perfectly captures not just two women discovering their mutual attraction, but also the impossibility of that attraction in conformist mid-century America.

Working with his long-time cinematographer Ed Lachman, and shooting on the Super-16 film, Haynes charts subtle shifts of power and desire in images that are alternately luminous and oppressive. Painted in the vivid colours of fifties melodrama, but with the devastating understated restraint of Brief Encounter, this is stunning, intelligent film-making that is destined to take its place among the greatest of cinematic romances.