Show Me Love: 10 movies every woman should see while celebrating Pride
It’s Pride, hennies! We’re sure you don’t need any help celebrating your local LGBTQI community and getting sloppy drunk with Sandra from accounting for it, but you might want some guidance on what films to watch in celebration of this queertastic month. Here are ten films that look at the many complexities of gay relationships, from young people who are still finding themselves to older people who have fought long and hard for the freedom to be themselves.
Carol
Todd Haynes’s film – based on the novel The Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith – is a glorious (and kinda hot) look at love and repression in 50s America. The film is beautifully shot by Haynes (Velvet Goldmine) and his D.O.P. Edward Lachman, but the performances by leads Cate Blanchett (Blue Jasmine) & Rooney Mara (The Social Network) are what really steal the show, with Mara as the younger and quieter Therese and Blanchett as the more worldwise Carol. The film not only shows the two fall in and out of love, but it also shows how Carol battles long and hard with everyone she has to, before in the end declaring that she will not deny who she is for anything or any one. Carol earned six Academy Award nominations and nine BAFTA nods, and recent 2025 rankings in major critic polls have reaffirmed its place among the decade’s standout titles.
Carol's Critical Legacy and Recent Rankings
The film’s reputation has only grown since release. It was named best LGBT film of all time in the 2016 BFI poll of more than one hundred experts. In 2025 it placed at number seventy-two on The New York Times list of the best one hundred movies of the twenty-first century and reached number fourteen on Rolling Stone’s ranking of the one hundred best movies of the same period, released that July.
10th Anniversary Celebrations
The milestone year brought fresh attention from programmers and audiences. Frameline honored Todd Haynes with an award on Carol Day 2025, and multiple theaters scheduled anniversary screenings through the final months of the year to mark the occasion.
Todd Haynes's Ongoing Queer Storytelling
Haynes continues to explore queer lives on screen. His next feature, De Noche, is a 1930s-set gay romance starring Pedro Pascal and Danny Ramirez. Principal photography began in March 2026, extending the director’s long interest in stories of hidden desire and public consequence.
The Price of Salt: Novel and Other Adaptations
The source material itself has traveled through different formats. Patricia Highsmith originally published the novel in 1952 under the pseudonym Claire Morgan. A five-part BBC Radio 4 adaptation aired in December 2014, bringing the story to listeners decades after its first appearance in print.
Carol still resonates because it treats its central relationship with patience and precision rather than spectacle. The careful framing, muted palettes, and restrained performances let the audience feel the weight of each glance and every withheld word. That restraint makes the final act feel earned instead of imposed, and it explains why the film keeps reappearing on retrospective lists long after the initial awards cycle ended. Viewers who return to it during Pride often note how the story still mirrors conversations happening today about visibility, risk, and the cost of choosing honesty over safety. The anniversary events and new rankings simply confirm what many audiences already sensed: the film’s quiet defiance travels well across time and across different screens.
