Drive-Away Dolls
In their first respective efforts as individual filmmakers, is it possible to glean where the mixture of filmmaking inspirations of Joel and Ethan Coen come from? It’s awfully tempting, given how different their solo efforts are. In Joel’s “The Tragedy of MacBeth,” Shakespearean tragedy is elevated in a highly stylized manner that nonetheless cuts to the emotional core of the characters. Meanwhile, in Ethan’s “Drive-Away Dolls,” genre silliness is the name of the game, and in it, you can feel where the likes of “Raising Arizona,” “The Hudsucker Proxy” and “The Big Lebowski” came from. While not as high art as his brother’s film, “Drive-Away Dolls” was pure pleasure, and very much a hit of that Coen magic.
This movie would not work without the wonderful, odd couple chemistry of Jamie, played by Margaret Qualley, and Marian, played by Geraldine Viswanathan. They are two friends, whom happen to both be lesbians, whose lives are moribund in a lot of ways as the year 2000 approaches. Marian is a fastidious worker and reader and Jamie is an impulsive and horny extrovert. After Jamie is broken up with by her girlfriend, Sukie (played by the hilarious Beanie Feldstein), the friends decide to take a road trip together to Tallahassee, Florida to visit Marian’s aunt. (Marian was going anyway; Jamie just invited herself.) They rent a car that is headed for Tallahassee anyway, and they hit the road. Little do they know that the car contains packages that have to do with the film’s opening sequence, where a man (Pedro Pascal) is nervous about the people around him. Now, they find themselves with people on their trail, and Jamie tries to get Marian to cut loose, and Marian just wants to get to Tallahassee.
While the film is set in the late ’90s, the feel of “Drive-Away Dolls” is that of a ’70s or ’80s road movie with some soft core porn influences throughout. The screenplay by Ethan and Tricia Cooke doesn’t have a lot to say about the time and place for Jamie and Marian from a social perspective- although most everyone seems comfortable with them; instead, the film is a movie about friendship and these two friends bonding in a way they didn’t necessarily anticipate. I love the work by Qualley and Viswanathan in this film; they are oil and water personality-wise, but we understand why they care about one another. The turns the film takes their relationship are natural when it comes to the the situations the film puts them into. Coen does a great job keeping the film sexy without feeling exploitative, and some of his cinematic choices are a big reason for that.
On the other side of the action, we get Coleman Domingo as The Chief, who is in charge of getting the packages to Tallahassee. He sends two of his best men after them, Arliss (Joey Slotnick) and Flint (C.J. Wilson), and they are as much polar opposites as Jamie and Marian. As a criminal duo goes, they are very much like the Steve Buscemi and Peter Stormare characters in “Fargo,” one whom engages people verbally (sometimes to a fault), and the other whom lets their actions speak for them. The ways their pursuit goes off the rails are a riot, and seeing the ways in which they are force their ways out of the moments are sharp and entertaining. We also get Matt Damon as a politician whom has an unexpected connection to the whole thing. At 84 minutes, there is not a lot of depth, but I thought there was entertainment in spades in “Drive-Away Dolls,” which feels like a lark when we consider the best Coen work over the decades, but it’s fun in a way we are familiar with from them.
