Drive-Away Dolls opens in theaters February 23.
The films of Joel and Ethan Coen have given cinema some of its most enduring criminal dum-dums. Hapless H.I. McDunnough in Raising Arizona. Dim-witted Linda and her himbo co-conspirator Chad in Burn After Reading. Know-it-all Walter and poor, doomed Donny leading The Dude in all the wrong directions in The Big Lebowski. Ethan proves himself to be the idiot whisperer of the Coens with Drive-Away Dolls, the writer-director’s first narrative feature made without his brother.
That’s not to say that this is a solo effort. Drive-Away Dolls was co-written and unofficially co-directed by Tricia Cooke, who’s also Coen’s longtime partner; the film is set in the late ’90s, and is very much based in Cooke’s experiences on the Sapphic bar scene around that time. (Should it become successful, the duo has a whole “lesbian trilogy” planned.) The film’s lesbian humor is bawdy – our introduction to Jamie (Margaret Qualley) is when her face emerges from between a conquest’s legs – and affectionately familiar, evoking a post-riot grrrl milieu that will be Doc Martens-clad catnip to queer women of a certain age. (Let’s just say that Le Tigre’s “Eau d’Bedroom Dancing” plays over a car stereo at one point.)
Drive-Away Dolls Gallery
Drive-Away Dolls Gallery
Geraldine Viswanathan co-stars as Marian, the uptight office-worker yin to Jamie’s earthy, Texas-accented yang. We never learn how these opposing personalities met and became friends, but lesbian social circles tend to be small, so it’s not really worth dwelling on. Suffice to say that Marian needs some adventure in her life, and Jamie needs to get out of town for a while to avoid the wrath of her soon-to-be-ex girlfriend Sukie (Beanie Feldstein). So they sign up for a job driving a car one way from Philadelphia to Florida, unwittingly activating a chain of comically violent events that marries Cooke’s brazen point of view with one of those bumbling criminal plots Coen does so well.
And the union is largely harmonious, as our oblivious heroines embark on a picaresque adventure – much to Marian’s dismay, Jamie simply cannot stay on course, and keeps getting distracted by women’s soccer teams and the like – across the American Southeast. A vague sense of political persecution hangs in the background of the story; this is Florida in the ’90s, after all. But the film thumbs its nose at the anti-gay sentiment of the Y2K era, which in some ways was less oppressive than the current climate, albeit with fewer legal protections. We’re having fun here, no lesbian suffering allowed – the trail of broken hearts Jamie leaves in her wake excepted.
If anything, Drive-Away Dolls is a little too well-lubricated, in the sense that throwaway gags and major plot developments breeze by at the same glib velocity. This is particularly evident with the aforementioned criminal subplot, which features Colman Domingo, Pedro Pascal, and, late in the game, Matt Damon in a small role as a conservative senator. Domingo can be truly threatening as a heavy, even in films with a light tone (see his role in the similarly Florida-set Zola). But that doesn’t really register here, which flattens the film into a “doing donuts in the parking lot” kind of delirium with little variation.
Coen’s Looney Tunes editing – Clock wipes? In this economy? – and the aggressive needle-drop soundtrack enhance the punch-drunk atmosphere of it all, which, again, is great when the jokes land. When they don’t, Drive-Away Dolls takes on a sweaty aura: Suddenly, Qualley’s Texas accent is a desperate gambit to fill the airless space around her, and Viswanathan’s squirming discomfort is a little too real. And there are a lot of jokes in the script, which means the opportunities to faceplant are plentiful as well. This movie is a rollercoaster ride, all right – one that’s bumpy as well as exhilarating.