WATCH: Cate Blanchett, Rooney Mara, and Todd Haynes on the Allure of 'Carol'

Cate Blanchett, Rooney Mara, and director Todd Haynes were apparently thrilled to work together on Carol, the 1950s-set lesbian love story that has become a sensation at the Cannes Film Festival, judging by a Deadline Hollywood video interview.

“Cate in a Patricia Highsmith lesbian love story … I am so there,” Haynes says of his reaction when he first heard the film was in the works.

Blanchett’s character, wealthy New Yorker Carol Aird, is somewhat objectified in Highsmith’s novel The Price of Salt, as she’s seen through the lens of younger woman Therese Belivet’s obsession with her, Blanchett says. But Phyllis Nagy’s screenplay and Haynes’s direction let viewers see behind “that sort of ambiguous, mysterious, alluring mask that is Carol,” she says.

Mara reveals that she initially felt she “wouldn’t be any good” in the film, having first read the script when she was exhausted after finishing The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, but when she got the screenplay back a year later, “it was a no-brainer” for her to accept the role of Therese.

Carol is set for a December 18 U.S. release. Watch the interview below.