It once seemed inconceivable that the Coen Brothers — affectionately described as “a monster with two heads” by Javier Bardem — would creatively part ways.
The duo’s fixations on genre remixing, mordant humour and screwball antics spanned 34 fruitful years, and last converged in 2018’s Western portmanteau The Ballad of Buster Scruggs.In the temporary hiatus that’s followed, their choice of individual narrative projects couldn’t be starker.Joel Coen went for a severe, minimalist rendering of Shakespeare with 2021’s The Tragedy of Macbeth.
Meanwhile, Ethan revisited the screenplay for Drive-Away Dykes, a raunchy lesbian road movie he co-wrote with his wife (and long-time Coen editor) Tricia Cooke in the 2000s, which had previously languished in pre-production.
Sporting a studio-mandated name change, Drive-Away Dolls has roared into cinemas just as the sex comedy seems to have rediscovered its mojo, with audiences warming up to films like Anyone But You, No Hard Feelings and Emma Seligman on Bottoms in the last year.
In the film’s opening, a skittish collector of exotic goods (Pedro Pascal; The Last of Us) is cornered in an alleyway by an assassin who’s intent on teaching a crucial Coen moral: bad things happen to those with valuable suitcases.
We’re subsequently introduced to Margaret Qualley’s (Maid) horned-up, motor-mouthed Jamie while she’s tongue-deep in a sweaty tryst, her libido getting in the way of her relationship with cop girlfriend Sukie (Beanie Feldstein, Booksmart).
When she’s quickly and inevitably dumped, she moves in with her buttoned-up bestie Marian (Australian Geraldine Viswanathan, Blockers), and they embark on a road trip to see Marian’s aunt and escape their current funk.
Unsurprisingly, those best-laid plans are hijacked in service of a more urgent goal: to end Marian’s terminal dry spell (“You can always find reasons to not have sex,” Jamie chides).
Danger and opportunity arise when fate (or merely just incompetence) places the suitcase’s hot goods — as well as a frozen head — into their “drive-away” rental car.
This fixes them in the crosshairs of an urbane criminal called The Chief (Colman Domingo; Rustin) with suspiciously deep pockets, who sets two bickering goons (Joey Slotnick and C.J. Wilson) on their tail.
abc
