Joel and Ethan Coen, aka the Coen Brothers, have made for a fantastic filmmaking partnership over the past 40 years, winning four Oscars together. But following their last film, 2018’s The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, they went their separate ways, with Joel saying Ethan didn’t want to make movies anymore. Ethan appears to have revived his passion, though, as he’s back as a solo director with Drive-Away Dolls.
Photo by Wilson Webb / courtesy of Working Title and Focus Features
C.J. Wilson, Colman Domingo, and Joey Slotnick in Drive-Away Dolls.
The new film, written by Coen and his wife, Tricia Cooke, is – of all things – a wacky comedy about two lesbians, Jamie (Margaret Qualley) and Marian (Geraldine Viswanathan), who unwittingly get caught up in a criminal enterprise. Jamie is a free spirit who will sleep with any woman who crosses her path – much to the chagrin of her girlfriend, Sukie (Beanie Feldstein) – while Marian is uptight and only willing to have sex with someone she knows well.
Looking to get away, the two young women take a job transporting a car from New York to Tallahassee, Florida. Unfortunately, that car happens to contain a couple of cases with ill-gotten goods meant for a powerful senator, and two goons (Joey Slotnick and C.J. Wilson) are soon on their trail to recover the cases. But since Jamie and Marian take many detours to find lesbian hangouts along the way, they prove harder to find than anticipated.
Looked at a certain way, the film has many of the same hallmarks of classic Coen Brothers comedies. The sensibility is off-kilter enough that many of the laughs come from how unusual the characters are behaving. That idea starts with Jamie, with her insatiable sexual appetite and comically broad Texas accent, whose friendship with Marian – her polar opposite in almost every way – is odd, if somewhat endearing.
But Coen and Cooke put their own unique stamp on the film, especially in the sexual nature of the story. The sex is played mainly for laughs, both in the actual scenes and the things characters use to help with the sex. None of it seems exploitative, although there will certainly be some who raise an eyebrow at a movie about lesbians being made by a straight couple and portrayed by two straight actors. (EDIT: Cooke gave a recent interview revealing she identifies as a lesbian.)
The comedy and a few big-name cameos make the movie fun, but even at only 84 minutes, it feels like Coen and Cooke aren’t exactly sure what to do with the story they started. With so many of the scenes being over-the-top, usually in the acting department, there don’t seem to be any real stakes. The film, set in 1999 for unknown reasons, ends with a joke that would have been great in that year, but now makes almost zero sense.
No matter what you think of her Texas accent, it’s hard to say that Qualley doesn’t give her all to her role. She and Viswanathan making for an appealing pair, with Viswanathan’s deadpan acting being a great complement to Qualley’s hamminess. Feldstein matches Qualley’s pitch in their scenes together, while Slotnick, Wilson, and others find ways to fit in well with the film’s overall tone.
It’s no replacement for the classic partnership of the Coen Brothers, but Drive-Away Dolls shows that Ethan Coen still knows how to make a good, if flawed, movie. And get ready for more, as Coen and Cooke apparently have a whole lesbian B-movie trilogy planned if this one is successful enough.
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Drive-Away Dolls opens in theaters on February 23.
