Directed by: Ethan Coen
Written by: Ethan Coen and Tricia Cooke
Starring: Margaret Qualley, Geraldine Viswanathan, and Beanie Feldstein
Runtime: 84 minutes
Ethan Coen’s queer crime caper ‘Drive-Away Dolls’ can’t find even road
A locked briefcase is a kind of cinematic Chekhov's gun. When a tough guy comes looking for it, heads are going to roll, sometimes literally.
In the hallowed tradition of “Pulp Fiction” and “Kiss Me Deadly,” director Ethan Coen – of the Coen brothers, flying solo – hides one such sinister plot device in the trunk of a car driven by a pair of oblivious young lesbians too concerned by sex and heartbreak to know they’re being hunted as they cruise down the East Coast, Florida-bound
But instead of containing nuclear annihilation, a criminal’s soul, or even a million dollars, Coen’s briefcase contains something much, much dumber. Call to mind the dumbest thing you can conjure. However dumb you’re thinking, it’s even dumber.
That’s both the charm and bafflement of “Drive-Away Dolls,” a raucous sex comedy neo-noir that’s as fun and unbalanced as that genre mashup sounds.
Jamie (Margaret Qualley) and Marian (Geraldine Viswanathan) make for a road trip odd couple, the former a fast-talking, philandering louche kicked out by her girlfriend Sukie (Beanie Feldstein), the latter a buttoned-up, corporate, type-A worrywart still nursing the wounds of a long-ago breakup. Pure plot contrivance pairs the platonic buddies in a Dodge Aries mistakenly loaned for a one-way trip south.
Their destination – Tallahassee, to visit Marian’s aunt – is the same as the briefcase’s drop-off point, where an interested party awaits its imminent arrival, then panics when the girls don’t make the delivery they don’t know they’re meant to make as they squabble over whether and how Marian needs to get laid.
Hijinks naturally ensue.
Coen wrote the script with his wife and longtime editing partner Tricia Cooke for his first solo feature film without brother Joel Coen after four decades, 18 films together and an armful of Oscars together. While Joel’s first solo film, 2021’s gorgeously bleak “The Tragedy of Macbeth,” was moody and formalistic, Ethan bends zany with Sam Raimi-esque camerawork, all zooms and tilted angles and goofball transitions between scenes (not to mention psychedelic interludes with a flower-child Miley Cyrus speaking from what looks like the inside of a lava lamp – the Dude wants a hit of whatever she’s smoking).
Little surprise, then, that in the riot of gags and camera angles, “Drive-Away Dolls” can’t find even keel in tone or structure, careening from one joke to the next, its main characters hanging on for dear life.
A charismatic Qualley gets the closest to figuring it out, relishing her character’s classic Coen cadence, a loquacious bumpkin waxing philosophical about female anatomy in lilting Texas twang and a heavy-lidded swagger that recalls nothing so much as Nicolas Cage in the Coens’ screwball masterpiece “Raising Arizona.” The film’s rife, too, with classic Coen highbrow nods sprinkled in amongst the lowbrow buffoonery. Marian’s girlfriend is desperate to hand off an irascible little dog named Alice B. Toklas, while the literature of Henry James enjoys a shockingly large footprint in a film so full of sex toys.
There are pleasures to be had, certainly. But like Jamie’s many one-night stands, the pleasures are fleeting.
Barbara’s ranking
2.5/4 stars
