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This article explores the 2015 film Carol, reading the two protagonists’ mutual coming-into-focus as emblematic of the film’s calling-into-focus cinematic representations of love, motherhood and artistry in relation to the intersections of queer and gendered challenges. In observing these challenges, the cinematic camera adopts the disposition of Therese, a ‘strange girl’, as Carol calls her, who develops a loving inquisitiveness that drives her towards romantic and artistic discovery. The film depicts and itself utilizes what I call a ‘strange girl gaze’, which, marked by a gentle curiosity and a willingness to listen to alternate perspectives, counters the domineering gaze of heteropatriarchal surveillance. Using a queer understanding of hope, my article considers the cinematic potential of this new way of looking, which attends to socially peripheral individuals, including their painful pasts, with innocence, open-mindedness and compassion.