Now that we’ve gotten a feature film from each of them on their own, I find myself fascinated by the separation of Joel and Ethan Coen. Joel’s The Tragedy of Macbeth in 2021 was a triumph of mood, the perfect mix of minimalist design and maximalist drama. If the film lacked the expected humor of a Coens movie, it still had the artful precision, with each frame a testament to Joel’s filmmaking skill. On the other end, we now have Ethan’s Drive-Away Dolls, a relentlessly queer comedy about two characters who unwittingly find themselves in over their heads. The film is equal parts violent and funny, the kind of tonal balance that’s familiar to fans of the Coens, but gone is the aesthetic restraint. This is Ethan’s All Things Must Pass. Everything he’s ever wanted to put on the screen is right up there in a dense 84-minute potboiler.
Coen wrote the Dolls script with his wife, Tricia Cooke. Cooke has been candid about the fact that she’s a lesbian, despite her marriage to Coen and the two children they share. However their life is arranged, it’s obvious that they succeed both as personal and creative partners. Cooke gets the editing credit, Coen gets the director credit, but similar to his arrangement with his brother Joel, it appears that Cooke and Coen basically shared all their responsibilities. Drive-Away Dolls is Cooke’s vision of a B movie lesbian caper, a shamelessly juvenile dive into genre sleaze. The script is then run through one of Coen’s elliptical plots, where various one-note characters of various idiosyncrasies play their small part in the plot’s ever-building insanity. The result is a hysterical comedy that’s kind of about accepting yourself, but also kind of about dildos.
Geraldine Viswanathan plays Marian, a high-strung young woman in Philadelphia who’s tired of fighting off advances from male co-workers and decides to take a road trip to visit her aunt in Tallahassee. Margaret Qualley plays Jamie, a forthright lesbian with a strong Texas twang who decides to join Marian on her trip after breaking up with her girlfriend, Sukie (Beanie Feldstein). Jamie sees the road trip as a chance to let loose, but Marian wants the opposite: she wants to relax. Marian has also recently ended a relationship, but she lacks Jamie’s aggressive nature, and she’s less comfortable being public about her queerness. So Jamie decides that a large part of the trip will be about getting Marian laid. They pick up a drive-away car rental from a man named Curlie (a hilarious Bill Camp) and hit the road for Tallahassee.
Unbeknownst to them, the car they take from Curlie has a suitcase in the trunk. In the film’s opening scene, that same suitcase is taken from a man named Santos (Pedro Pascal), right before he’s decapitated (trigger warning to Game of Thrones fans). So, we can see that this suitcase is obviously carrying some precious cargo. When two heavies (Joey Slotnick and C.J. Wilson) arrive at Curlie’s to pick up the car carrying the case, they’re none to pleased to find Curlie has given it away to the wrong people. They call upon their boss, Chief (Colman Domingo) to try and figure things out. Chief sends the two men after the car, in hot pursuit of Marian and Jamie. Totally oblivious, the girls make stops in queer bars, slumber parties, and high-end hotels in an effort to cut loose and embrace their wilder side. When they finally realize that they’re driving more than just a rental car, they must plan a way to get out of a dangerous situation.
The heightened style of the plot disguises just how much of it is for not. Red herrings abound as the many zany strands of the story often falter and fall off out of necessity. Think Burn After Reading minus the DC intrigue and plus women making out with each other. Without the polish of Joel’s more disciplined style, Ethan’s humor for misdirection can sometimes feel contrived, but Coen and Cooke often weaponize the convenience of their plot points, leaning into the B movie style, allowing the audience to better accept that there’s not much more below the surface. Ethan Coen might be the best in the business at making an audience invest in something for nothing. That he consistently pulls this off without cheapening the audience’s experience is a testament to his skill as a comedic writer – even if something is flippant, it goes down easier if it makes you laugh.
The events of the story take place in 1999, though the script doesn’t make much of the setting. In fact, it actively recalls imagery of the 60’s, including many unctuous transitions between scenes, and a handful of unexplained moments where Miley Cyrus appears as a hippie from the other side of a dream. Whose dream? Her character reveals herself over time, like many of the story’s smaller details. Most of the revelations that occur over the course of the film are both less substantial than you expect, but more clever than you anticipate. This shagginess throughout gives Drive-Away Dolls a charm that a less talented filmmaker would probably struggle to pull off. Combining with Cooke, Ethan Coen is not only paying credence to her queerness, but also exploring queer spaces with genuine curiosity and understanding.
So in their two solo efforts, what we have is an almost complete bifurcation of the Coen Brothers’ lengthy and superlative filmography. It’s almost bizarre how completely you can see the individual efforts within a duo separated so perfectly. Both Dolls and Macbeth are exceptional films, in totally different ways, but if anything is particularly illuminating, it’s that neither contains the alchemy between the brothers when they work together. Theirs really is a perfect mix of unmatched cinematic talent and a savant-level expertise of story and humor. On its own, Drive-Away Dolls is a hilarious comedy with plenty of laughs, if not a lot of depth. Qualley (who’s basically doing a feature-length impression of her mother) adds to her bevy of oddball characters, while Viswanathan continues to prove her gifts for comedic timing. Coen and Cooke showcase their actors well, which more than makes up for the film’s occasional triteness.
Directed by Ethan Coen