DRIVE-AWAY DOLLS

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7 Apr 2024

MARCH 17, 2024 THEFILM.BLOG LEAVE A COMMENT
★★★
Now here’s a film that hits the ‘D’ spot. Dildos, double-crossing, decapitation and…dykes? No. Dolls. Judicious executive censoring put pay to the original title. This is the long-awaited Joel-free feature debut of Ethan Coen. Joel broke free of the Coen brand with The Tragedy of Macbeth, now Ethan presents Drive-Away Dolls. It’s a fine enough title but of limited value as a forebear of the debauchery within. Of course, a film’s success is measured less by the size of its silicone penises than what the director does with them. Coen thrusts his front and centre, sex toy and emasculatory symbol alike. The frolics are raucously flippant. Sure, the film desperately wants for tighter and more incisive plotting but we can, at least, rely on Joel for that. Suddenly we see how the pairing adds up.
On which matter, what a pairing Margaret Qualley and Geraldine Viswanathan turn out to be. Individually, the duo have long sat on the precipice of stardom. Here, now, together, sparks fly. They play the titular dolls; lovelorn lesbians in a vibrantly horny Philadelphia, circa 1999. Qualley is the freewheeling and thrillingly polyamorous Jamie. As cuckquened ex-girlfriend Sukie (Beanie Feldstein) has it: ‘put her p***y on a meter and we could all retire’. Their break up scene is an all-timer. Viswanathan, meanwhile, is uptight bookworm Marian. Seemingly, she’s Jamie’s polar opposite. One reads Henry James, the other draws the line at highway signs. That’s how it appears on the surface but never judge a book by its cover.
One thing the two do have in common, for instance, is a want to vacate Pennsylvania. Marian has her eyes on Tallahassee and Jamie lives a life with neither compass nor clitoral restriction. Together, they hitch a drive-away job – this being the process of driving a hire car from A to B when it’s needed in B anyway and that just happens to be where you’re heading. What they don’t bargain for is a suspect briefcase in the trunk. That and three beefy gangsters (Colman Domingo, Joey Slotnick, and CJ Wilson) very keen to get their hands on it. Whatever the cost.
There’s blood shed aplenty but John Wick this is not. Working from a script from Tricia Cooke, his openly queer and “non-traditional” wife, Coen’s approach is playful to a tee. Precocious editing and psychedelic side steps might harm the flow but show off a flair for the creatively cuckoo. The film’s goriest death involves a corkscrew and a suit running down an alleyway holding a saw above his head. This segues to Jamie face deep in vaginal fluids, and then a luridly concupiscent open mic night. Miley Cyrus pops up from time to time, in bursts of lava lamp colour, phallic artist Tiffany Plaster-Caster – a nod to real life caster Cynthia – while extensive flashbacks explore a young Marian’s full frontal sexual awakening.
Delightful – and delight-filled – depravities aside, it would be wrong to overlook the very genuine tenderness at the heart of Drive-Away Dolls. Much of this rests on the impressive grounding work of Viswanathan, whose Marion undergoes the most profound journey here. Qualley’s Jamie is, too, capable of surprise, even if her bursts of emotional sincerity can’t keep her rampant libido at bay for long. There’s a delicious pay off when Marion and Jamie finally open the mystery briefcase they’ve accidentally shipped down the east coast interstate. It’s a typically climactic highlight.
T.S.