Cate Blanchett and Mia Wasikowska couple up in May December romance

Cate Blanchett

While Blue is the Warmest Color, winner of the Palme D'or is certainly the biggest lesbian love story to come out of Cannes this year -  it's not the only one. Dealmaker Harvey Weinstein finalized and announced his plans (or grabbed the chance at free pr) at Cannes to go forward with the Todd Haynes directed adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's gay romance novel of the 1950's Carol aka The Price of Salt. Adapted by Phyllis Nagy, the film comes with Cate Blanchett and Mia Wasikowska attached and starts filming in the fall. 

Mia Wasikowska

Like Behind the Candelabra, this love story is a May December romance too. According to Deadline  Carol tells the dual stories of two women: a twenty-something woman (Wasikowska) working in a department store hoping for a better life; and a wife (Blanchett) trapped in a loveless marriage, afraid for her daughter if she bolts. Apparently at the time it was unheard of for lesbian fiction to end optimistically; Highsmith (Stranger on a Train, The Talented Mr. Ripley) a closeted homosexual herself broke form with Carol earning the novel high praise in the lesbian community at the time. I find the casting fascinating; both are unconventional blonde beauties - who could easily play mother and daughter rather than lovers.

Here's the publisher's take on the book - 
"Therese first glimpses Carol in the New York department store where she is working as a sales assistant. Carol is choosing a present for her daughter; she looks preoccupied, exuding an aura of elegance as perfect as a secret. Standing there at the counter, Therese suddenly feels wholly innocent - wholly unprepared for the first shock of love. Therese was nineteen, and loved by a young man she cared about, but could not desire. Carol was a sophisticated married woman. Now Therese seemed to have no other purpose to her life other than their meeting. First published under a pseudonym in 1952, Carol is a love story told with compelling wit and eroticism, and consummate tenderness."