Love Is a Sleigh Ride to Hell in Ethan Coen's Lesbian Crime Caper Drive-Away Dolls

DRIVE-AWAY DOLLS 

(Ethan Coen, USA, 2024, rated R, 84 minutes) 

I said, when I go down to Florida way

There ain't no kind of sexual healing that I would not, should not, or could not do 

Said this right here

--Butthole Surfers, 

"Moving to Florida" (1984)

Ethan Coen's solo narrative debut represents a return to the screwball comedies he and his older brother, Joel, made on and off, starting with 1987's Raising Arizona (I wouldn't describe their first feature, Blood Simple, as a comedy, though it certainly has comic elements). Ethan turned 33 that year; he's 69 now. 

Times have changed a lot since then, and even if Drive-Away Dolls captures the feel of their previous work, it's unlikely that the brothers would have built a film around two hot-to-trot, twentysomething lesbians in the 1980s. 

Granted, Margaret Qualley's twangy Texas transplant Jamie is more--way more--sexually expressive than her buttoned-down, drily amusing roommate Marian (Bad Education's Geraldine Viswanathan, an Australian actress of Indian and Swiss descent), but they're both on the make in their own unique ways. Just because they're both queer, and unconflicted about their sexual orientation doesn't mean they aren't very different people. It's a staple of comedies, romantic comedies especially, since time immemorial, though it's less true of Emma Seligman's 2023 lesbian comedy Bottoms, to which I'll be returning, because the two films share significant similarities. 

If Marian needs Jamie to keep her staid, office-drone life interesting--even if she often finds her exasperating--Jamie needs Marian to keep her grounded. Marian hasn't dated anyone since a bad breakup a few years before, whereas Jamie is the love 'em and leave 'em type. Throughout the film, she's often pictured having enthusiastic sex with women she barely knows. These scenes are more graphic, though not what I would consider exploitative, than you might expect from a Coen joint.

If you've seen any of Qualley's work to date, including last year's S&M thriller Sanctuary, you'll know she has few qualms about nudity. Like her mother, Andie MacDowell, she divides her time between modeling and acting, and models tend to be more comfortable with nudity than actresses, in part because it's a requirement of the job--if not full nudity then states of undress that come close--and Qualley has several nude scenes in the film, while Viswanathan has none. It's also possible that the latter doesn't share her exhibitionist tendencies, but it doesn't matter; it fits their characters. 

After introducing the Philadelphia-based lives of these longtime friends, Ethan plunks them on the road. Jamie comes up with the idea of driving a car to Florida to escape their cares. In her case, one of those cares includes her obnoxious ex, Sukie (Lady Bird's Beanie Feldstein, who has been out since at least 2019). She shares her excitable nature, except hers is of the more pessimistic kind. She's also extremely bitter about their breakup. 

Upon working out an arrangement with surly drive-away car coordinator Curlie (played amusingly by Bill Camp), the road trip begins.

Unbeknownst to the women, there's cargo in the trunk that the Chief (Rustin Oscar nominee Colman Domingo) has tasked his goons, Arliss (a bald Joey Slotnik) and Flint (C.J. Wilson), with delivering to Tallahassee, except Jamie and Marian beat them to the vehicle, and Curlie doesn't know about the cargo--a hyper-violent prologue with Pedro Pascal represents our introduction to a mysterious suitcase that recalls the mysterious suitcases of noir and noir-adjacent predecessors from Kiss Me Deadly to Pulp Fiction. 

Jamie and Marian accept Curlie's assignment to deliver the car to Florida in 24 hours, except the former is chronically allergic to commitment, and side trips ensue to seedy motels, lesbian bars, and an afterparty with a women's soccer team where she hooks up with willing players, while Marian, for the most part, bides her time with a book--Henry James's comic novella The Europeans, to be precise. If the goons are bumbling idiots, the Chief shares her interest in classic literature. In his case: James's The Golden Bowl. 

Whether Ethan, who co-wrote the screenplay with his wife, editor and producer Tricia Cooke (The Big Lebowski), intends any significance by these novels--The Europeans revolves around a visit by two siblings to New England--I couldn't say, but it isn't uncharacteristic for a Coen film to feature a literate or urbane bad guy...even if they're also a coldblooded killer. 

The director makes sure we know how much danger the Chief and his gun-toting minions represent through the torture they order or inflict on Curlie and Pascal's Collector. If the violence is intense, it's so over-the-top--in a Tex Avery meets Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner way--that I was more amused than offended. In an unusual coincidence, Bottoms revolves around a high school fight club founded by two hot-to-trot teen lesbians desperate to lose their virginity. That film is predicated on violence. Unlike this one, however, it's not especially sexy, which is weird because it's essentially a teen sex comedy. Better than Bob Clark's infamous Porky's to be sure, but surprisingly timid when it comes to sex. Much like Drive-Away Dolls, though, game performances from Rachel Sennott and Ayo Edebiri save the day. 

Naturally, everyone left standing in Drive-Away Dolls ends up in Tallahassee--including Matt Damon's conservative senator, who also covets the suitcase--and it's what I would both hope and expect from a screwball comedy/crime caper. If I have a problem with the film, and I do, it's that the screenplay could've used another pass. Too many lines that were clearly intended to be funny land with a thud, despite the cast's best efforts, but it's a minor complaint, because it's a fast-moving film that even makes time for leisurely interludes, some featuring Miley Cyrus as a plaster caster, that recall Jeremy Blake's painterly interludes for P.T. Anderson's Punch-Drunk Love, but rendered in a more psychedelic sixties--if digitally-constructed--manner. 

Another problem: the way Ethan keeps reminding us that these women are lesbians. And that they're horny. We know. We really know. Bottoms used the same playbook, even as its maker is a 28-year-old queer woman who grew up in a more enlightened era. I wouldn't say that Ethan, who has been married to Cooke since 1990, is revealing any prejudices through these single-minded portrayals, though; it's probably just meant to be funny. 

I suspect that he and Cooke genuinely like these characters. To quote Ethan in a recent interview with the AP, "Tricia's queer and sweet and I'm straight and stupid. That could be the slogan of the movie: 'Straight and stupid.' Me and Joel couldn't do that because we're both straight and stupid." Fair enough, but it's still possible for a lesbian to have interests other than being a lesbian (and reading one book). 

Then again, the portrayals of lesbians on screen, especially prior to Rose Troche's 1994 rom-com Go Fish, which they have cited as an inspiration, didn't used to be quite so freewheeling, so I get that we've reached the stage of queer representation in which coming out to friends and family, struggling with homophobic relatives and discriminatory authority figures, and other indignities can be considered things of the cinematic past.

The soundtrack, assembled by music supervisor Tiffany Anders, provides a definitive high point. Anders, the daughter of Allison Anders--who nearly made the film as Drive-Away Dykes in 2002--served as music supervisor for Reservation Dogs and Beef, and she's very good at what she does. If you're fond of Funkadelic's "Maggot Brain," you'll be in seventh heaven since guitarist Eddie Hazel's otherworldly opus plays throughout each interlude. If you're not, you may tire of it quickly. It's also possible you're insane. 

If I didn't love Drive-Away Dolls as much I expected to once I first watched the trailer--prior to the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes it was slated for 2023--I definitely had a good time. In every way, it's the exact opposite of Joel Coen's black-and-white directorial debut, The Tragedy of Macbeth, with Denzel Washington and his wife, Frances McDormand, which I loved (believe me, it helps to see it on the big screen; I'm not convinced that epic Apple films like Macbeth and Martin Scorsese's Killers of the Flower Moon benefit from streaming, though it seems likely to have expanded their audiences). 

I'm not interested in taking sides either. If I prefer Macbeth to Drive-Away Dolls, it's due primarily to personal preference, since they don't have much in common. The former is more serious and more artfully shot (by Inside Llewyn Davis's Bruno Delbonnel), but if anything, we're as lucky to get to enjoy the Coen Brothers together as separately, in which they reveal strikingly different, yet equally appealing sides of their personas. As long as they continue making the films they want to make: I'll be watching them.

 

Ethan Coen's true solo directorial (not narrative) debut was 2022's Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble in Mind. Drive-Away Dolls opens at the Meridian, Pacific Place, AMC 10, and other area theaters on Fri, Feb 23. Images from the IMDb (Geraldine Viswanathan and Margaret Qualley), Patti Perret/Orion Pictures/TNS via The Lantern (Ayo Edebiri and Rachel Senott in Bottoms), Screen Rant (Beanie Feldstein), Frameline (T.J. Wilson, Colman Domingo, and Joey Slotnik), and Wikipedia (Funkadelic's 1971 Maggot Brain).