Drive-Away Dolls

dirs: Tricia Cooke & Ethan Coen

2024

I have to admit that I went into this flick a bit annoyed from the get go. The knowledge that Pedro Pascal was in the flick was definitely something that attracted me towards it. Seeing him killed within the first few minutes is… a guarantee that I’m going to be off-put or put off, take yer pick.

Classic bait and switch. Worst of all they seem to reference what was for me one of the most horrific onscreen character deaths in a tv show that I’ve ever seen, being the brutal death of Oberyn Martell in Game of Thrones.

Too soon. You don’t get to joke about that, to me. Still hurts.

So. Chap nervously cradling briefcase is murdered, presumably the people who acquired the briefcase have alternative plans for it. Those plans involve transporting the briefcase, and a bag with Pedro’s head in it, to Tallahassee, Florida. Instead of doing so with a modicum of forethought or intelligence, the criminals somehow fuck it up.

Enter our two protagonists, onto the scene. Two friends. One is a confident and assertive lesbian called Jamie (Margaret Qualley) shown cheating on her cop partner as the flick begins. The other is a less assertive, more insecure lesbian called Marian (played by Australia’s Own Geraldine Viswanathan), who isn’t cheating on anybody anytime soon. She is more inhibited, which we know because she wears tight-laced blouses that seem to be strangling her throat.

For…reasons, they end up driving a rental car down to Tallahassee. The car happens to have the briefcase and the head loosely stored in the trunk.

So, is this a comic caper, a violent Tarantino-esque lolfest with pithy dialogue and a score of soon-to-be-classic lines? Or is it a serious crime drama about two completely different people realising how deeply incompatible they are, deciding after much travail to go their separate ways?

I am not sure. At first Margaret Qualley’s mile a minute prattling is baffling in its speed and in its discursiveness, and then I was put in mind of an earlier Coen Brothers’ movie, being the way George Clooney’s character in O Brother Where Art Thou? prattled on and on in that flick. They’re both confident shit talkers, which means the vast majority of what they’re going on about is absolute bullshit, and it also means they think they’re way smarter that the people around them.

Jamie’s sexual aggressiveness is, I guess, meant to be comical. Though this is set in the late 90s, no matter where in the States they are, she can sense the presence and the density of other lesbians, and easily falls into embraces and kanoodles at the drop of a hat. Marian, on the other hand, is more content with a Henry James novel, a lie-down, and presumably a cup of Milo before an early night’s sleep.

I think we’re meant to relate more to Marian than Jamie, because she’s the more thoughtful one? I’m not sure, because the characterisation with Jamie is consistent, but somewhat less so for Marian. She seems to be plagued by visions of her childhood from spying on a beautiful naked neighbour, but however idyllic these ‘visions’ are meant to be, they’re still scenes of a child peeping on a neighbour without her knowledge or consent, and we never find out what this means to Marian. Her obvious attraction? curiosity? about the naked woman who pulls on a pair of ruby red cowboy boots when hassled by her husband, is counterbalanced with her obvious disgust upon seeing the chap in a similarly semi-undressed state.

There are elements here that feel like they’re trying to be forthright about lesbian sexuality that are all well and good, and I feel compelled to compare and contrast with another recent flick that had a queer director with two queer protagonists (played by queer actors, the film being Love Lies Bleeding), and I think I’ve already made my point, because Ethan Coen is not gay, though his wife Tricia Cooke, who I think did everything bar the catering on this flick, identifies as a lesbian. The two leads aren’t gay though, not that I’m gatekeeping, because I think they’re fine actors and deserve all the roles they can get in anything that they can.

I just… I don’t know about this flick. I think we’re meant to see it as a jolly jape, a fun time had by all, but it’s just so fucking silly sometimes, which they use to try and paper over some of the dumber aspects of the non-existent plot. This feels a lot like something dreamt up by bored people during a lockdown, and made during or just after a lockdown, which is okay. I have seen at least a thousand similar productions that seemed to arise similarly from a frantic desire to just fucking do something, even if it isn’t that great and doesn’t really feel like it has that much of a reason for existing.

I may have had some issues with some of the more bonkers elements of Love Lies Bleeding, but it at least had a level of energy / ferocity that justified its existence and propelled its protagonists through the guts of a deliberately ugly story.

This flick… is too cute for its own sake, and almost feels unfinished, which is not a criticism, because I’m glad it was only 84 minutes long, and would have felt intense agony had it gone for another half hour. It also feels like the massive u-turn it takes from Jamie being a “fuck every lesbian that moves” kind of protagonist to “I will love you and only you, whatever your name is” for Marian’s sake is comical only in how unlikely and unearned it felt. I think both actors do fine in their roles, it’s just that, really, this was the only way to go?

There’s also the two henchmen on their trail which I guess was meant to be funny. It was agony. I wanted to shoot myself the more they argued, and when one of them freaks out and kills a whole bunch of people for no fucking reason I went “Okay, so that’s the kind of flick this is.”

One of the people killed is Colman Domingo, and that was just another waste of a great talent.

I’m not even going to spoil what’s in the briefcase, but it’s so fucking dumb, even as it results in the dumbest Matt Damon cameo since “Scotty Doesn’t Know”-era EuroTrip, where some poor shmuck finds out his girlfriend is cheating on him with Matt Damon. It’s… blah.

There might have been a funnier film trapped underneath these requirements for a conventional caper seeming movie, but when Bill Camp delivers the funniest line in a film, and it’s “Will no-one save Curlie?”, well, maybe you should have revised the script a few more times before dedicating it to Cynthia Plastercaster, who admittedly was something of a legend for what she did, but not for cinematic comedy, that’s for sure.

I will give the flick one extra point for Beanie Feldstein’s violent cop character, because any flick or tv series is always improved by having copious amounts of Beanie in it. She’s always great and she always delivers, even in undeserving flicks.

6 times Henry James’ Drive-Away Dykes would have been a bolder title, yes, but the flick would still have been just as pointless out of 10

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“I’m from Texas. We don’t read minds. We operate on a handshake basis.” - Drive-Away Dolls