DRIVE-AWAY DOLLS
US, 2024, 84 minutes, Colour.
Margarette Qualey, Geraldine Viswanathan, Beanie Feldstein, Joey Slotnick, C.J.Wilson, Colman Domingo, Pedro Pascal, Bill Camp, Matt Damon.
Directed by Ethan Coen.
This is the first film made by Ethan Coen without his brother, all. Joel Coen had also worked by himself with his version of Macbeth, starring Denzel Washington and his wife, Frances McDormand.
The Coen Brothers have always made films which can be described as offbeat, comic, rye, ironic, with particular perceptions and observations on American society.
This film could be described as a caper, with violence, especially with its opening and a cameo by Pedro Pascal nervously in a diner, clutching a case, confronting the owner, pursued, decapitated and the case stolen. This certainly offers an ironic tone. And the setting is 1999.
The film then changes tone quite completely, sex and sexuality, lesbian sex, frank, explicit, descriptions, language, and this continuing throughout.
There are two central characters, Jamie, Margaret Qualley, vivacious, from Texas, exuberantly extrovert (but many criticising her broad Texas accent as unreal, over the top), in a relationship with a policewoman, Suki, Beanie Feldstein. We are also introduced to a rather prim Marian, Geraldine Viswanathan, working in her office, her co-worker flirting but she looking severe, correcting his vocabulary. She is later seen reading Henry James the Europeans throughout the film. Jamie and Suki breaking up, a point of contention a small dog who will reappear throughout the film.
Marian has decided to travel to Tallahassee and Jamie decides to travel with her, going to driveaway company with the manager, Bill Camp (and a joke about his name, Curly and their being forward in addressing him but this only having just met him), then thugs turn up for the car which is transporting the case seen at the beginning of the film as Well Is the head of the victim. So, caper, and pursuit. The two thugs, in their characters, in their interactions and behaviour, the moments of violence, one smooth talking and explaining his tactics, reminiscent of the two thugs in Fargo.
And their Chief is played by Colman Domingo, answering to a boss on the phone. On the way, the girls see a poster of a politician wanting re-election, Conservative, values-stances, and he is played by Matt Damon.
Jamie decides that Marian is too buttoned up, takes her to various lesbian sex clubs, encounters with a lesbian sports team, Jamie intruding with a partner into a hotel room, later Marian going for a lonely walk and accosted by the police, having to spend a night in jail.
The two thugs are tracking down the women, misled by the lesbian sports team to go to a remote African-American club, chatting to an old man, finding that have been taken in – and the thugs continuing with the squabbling.
When the girls’car breaks down, they find what is in the boot of the car – not only the head, but the mysterious case contains models of various replica dildoes (Jamie trying one out). Jamie also phoned Suki with some information but is not believed, but finally Suki deciding to come down to Tallahassee.
There are some flashbacks which explain Marian’s sexual orientation, watching a nude bathing neighbour, making a peep hole in the fence…
When the girls are abducted, tied up, interrogated by the Chief, there are some absurd: twists on the plot, one of the thugs going berserk and shooting his partner and the Chief, the girls escaping. They then decide to get $1 million from the political candidate whose replica they have. They confront Matt Damon, then he decides to attack them, masked, but Suki is on the spot, shootout.
Marian finishes reading the Europeans. They have made copies of the candidates dildo, and the desire to go to Massachusetts, this is 1999, where same-sex marriages are available. Happy ending.
Many audiences will turn up to see a Coen film. It may be put off by the initial violence and decapitation. Others might be put off by the lesbian sequences and their explicitness. So, the film is for the broadminded, perhaps a bit more broadmindedly than usual.
