Carol lesbian kisses cut from Delta in-flight movie

The airline says it had to take an edited copy of the film in order to remove the sex scene

Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara as Carol and Therese in Carol

Delta Air Lines has sparked controversy after showing an edited version of Carol that cuts out all the lesbian kisses between its lead actresses.

The film, based on The Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith, stars Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara as two women who fall in love in sexually repressive 1950s New York.

The lead actresses were critically acclaimed for their powerfully subtle performances while director Todd Haynes was praised for his beautiful treatment of the story, but film lovers were disappointed to see that Carol and Therese’s romance had been deemed too inappropriate for flight passengers.

Gay comedian Cameron Esposito was among the viewers to call Delta Air Lines out for its controversial decision. “Watched Carol on a plane and they edited it so the main characters never even kiss. Booooooo. Two women kissing is fine for planes,” she wrote on Twitter, before tweeting a still from one of the film’s kissing scenes along with a caption reading: “This is not dirty”.

Screenwriter Phyllis Nagy, who wrote the screenplay for Carol, said that United Airlines and American Airlines took the full version of the film shown in cinemas while others chose to screen the edited copy.

Delta has said that it chose the edited copy because the theatrical version included explicit scenes that “did not meet its guidelines”. Unfortunately, the edited copy also removed all kissing, but the company did not have the rights to edit them back in.

“There were two versions of this film that the studio makes available - one that is edited and one that is not edited,” a representative told LGBT magazine AfterEllen. “The edited version removes two explicit scenes that do not meet our guidelines. The edited version also removes all kissing. The other version is fully non-edited and includes the kissing, but it also includes the explicit scenes.

“Unfortunately, Delta doesn’t have the rights to edit the movie, or to make the decision to keep some of that content (e.g. kissing). Because of the explicit scenes included in the non-edited version, we chose the edited version. This is consistent with what is available to all airlines.”

Some fans have started using the #FreeCarol hashtag to convey their disapproval at Delta’s decision not to show the full film while others, including singer Mary Lambert, have expressed their surprise after watching Carol and assuming that the lack of physical intimacy was a creative decision.

“Makes zero sense without the intimacy,” Nagy said in a response to a fan saying how “sad” it is that people are not seeing the true film.

It remains to be seen whether Delta will reverse its decision.