Drive-Away Dolls has already been relegated to the lower-impact tier of Coen’s films. But in its lack of grand thematic ambition, it uses its premise to the full, brimming with sexuality, violence and more than enough eccentric in-jokes and characters to marvel at beyond a first viewing. Drive-Away Dolls is now showing in cinemas nationwide.
Joel and Ethan Coen are considered one of entertainment’s greatest sibling duos. So their recent choice to work on separate projects has seemed interesting, to say the least, but also indicative of their particular neuroses. In 2021, Joel Coen released his Shakespearean adaptation, The Tragedy of Macbeth. This film embraced Bergman-esque soundstage formalism and focused on performance and dialogue that stayed true to Shakespeare’s language as Hollywood powerhouses Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand leaned into their theatre backgrounds. In his first film independent of his brother (in both writing and directing), “Tragedy” leaned into cold characters and a foreboding atmosphere, without the usual Coen quirk to bounce off.
This leads us to Drive-Away Dolls, Ethan’s first film independent of Joel, which contains all the zany Midwestern/Southern American archetypes and the breakneck pace of Raising Arizona, The Hudsucker Proxy, and Intolerable Cruelty. Written by Ethan Coen and his wife Tricia Cooke, an editor on a few of the Coen features, “Dolls” follows two friends, Jamie (Margaret Qualley), a free spirit reeling off a bad breakup with her cop girlfriend Sukie (Beanie Feldstein) and Marian (Geraldine Viswanathan), a more anxious, workaholic type. As Marian plans a quick getaway to Tallahassee, Jamie tags along with their “drive-away” rental car. A chaotic set of events follows, from run-ins with conservative senators to criminals, a mysterious briefcase, and a lesbian football team, as the two friends discover themselves and each other on a zany road trip.
Anyone familiar with Coen’s crime comedies mentioned in the previous paragraph will not be disappointed by Dolls’ intentionally low-brow thrills and humour, topped with enough finesse to remind you that this is from one of the minds behind No Country For Old Men.
What stands out is the joke-a-minute screenplay, direction, speed and nuance of the comic delivery. From Margaret Qualley’s Jamie, a quick-talking lesbian Texan who has little shame explaining her sex life in full detail, to Geraldine Viswanathan’s Marian, who is more enthralled by her Henry James book than getting laid. Their dynamic, reminiscent of Favreau and Vaughn in Swingers (1996), is the film’s true heart, and while it mostly remains goofy, a real kinship and chemistry grow between Qualley and Viswanathan.
Viswanathan’s Marian has recurring dreams of her childhood desires, which were repressed; as she slowly allows those desires to become reality, Qualley’s Jamie learns to slow down and focus on her relationships rather than hedonism. Add a criminal subplot led by the brilliant Colman Domingo as “The Chief” and a series of absurd but well-executed genre thrills, and you have a winning formula.
Drive-Away Dolls has already been relegated to the lower-impact tier of Coen’s films. But in its lack of grand thematic ambition, it uses its premise to the full, brimming with sexuality, violence and more than enough eccentric in-jokes and characters to marvel at beyond a first viewing. Refusing to overstay its welcome at a runtime of 84 minutes, Ethan Coen and Tricia Cooke use every minute of that to entertain, whether through Loony Tunes-esque paranoia, quick-witted dialogue, or classically dumb criminal side characters. Here, its runtime is not to be taken as laziness, but rather as an acute understanding of the exact feeling it wants to give its audience.
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