The Coen brothers split four years ago and it has taken them a while to release solo albums that define their identities. (The Beatles broke up in 1970, and Paul, John and George had completed their solo recording mission by the end of that year.) In 2021, Joel Coen directed “The Tragedy of Macbeth,” which was a dazzling film noir. black-and-white pastiche of a Shakespearean drama (a little Bergman, a little Val Lewton, a little “Ivan the Terrible” and “Ordet” and “The Trial”).
It was well made, but it felt like a one-off, a decision by Coen to serve the material (and perhaps to serve his wife, Frances McDormand, who gave a spectacular performance as Lady Macbeth). A year later, Ethan Coen presented “Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble in Mind,” a small-scale rock and roll documentary he made during the pandemic; It was a YouTube clip work, and expertly crafted in those terms, but even after Jerry Lee's death (five months after the film premiered in Cannes), it was never released.
Director: Ethan Coen
Writers: Ethan Coen, Tricia Cooke
Stars: Margaret Qualley, Geraldine Viswanathan, Beanie Feldstein
Now, however, we finally have a Coen film in which one of the brothers puts his solo stamp on film. “Drive-Away Dolls,” directed by Ethan Coen, is a crime-ridden road trip about two innocent young women, that is, innocent of illegal activities; Margaret Qualley's sexually voracious and unapologetic Jamie seems, in every other way, a step beyond innocent: who are taking a car to drive to Tallahassee, not realizing it has some special items in the trunk : a box containing a decapitated head. , and a metal suitcase containing... well, it would be a crime to reveal it, but let's say the movie tries to build the mystique of that suitcase in the same way Tarantino did (pinging in "Kiss Me Deadly"). with the suitcase in “Pulp Fiction”, although in this case the effect is slightly less radioactive.
“Drive-Away Dolls” is a joke, a curiosity, a prank that feels like that of the Coen brothers, which is saying a lot, since the Coens, in the 18 films they made together over 35 years, gave us many movies that were to begin with (like “The Hudsucker Proxy” and “Hail, Caesar!” and “The Ladykillers”). The scenario of young women being pursued by criminals feels like old Coen noir screwball. There are two thugs behind the women (billed, in the credits, only as the Thugs), one bald and furiously rational (Joey Slotnick), the other a distracted psychopath (CJ Wilson). And you could call Qualley's Jamie a Coen archetype that goes back to Holly Hunter's character in "Raising Arizona": the Southern charlatan, who spouts her ironically literate folk wisdom.
But she is also the novelty of the film. Coen wrote “Drive-Away Dolls” with his wife, Tricia Clarke, and she says Jamie is a character that emerged from his own sphere of experience. Qualley makes her a queer libertine dynamo: a woman who will fuck anything that moves, but the beauty of Qualley's performance is that she somehow makes Jamie's arousal seem like a form of enlightenment. Why not?, she seems to say. There is all this beauty in the world; How could she, or anyone else, let it go?
This, of course, jeopardizes the possibility of maintaining a relationship. At first, Jamie leaves her roommate, a cop played with catchy hostility by Beanie Feldstein; She does it as naturally as if she were throwing out last month's new clothes. Jamie, as played by Qualley, is a pure cinematic creation: an erotic idealist, the kind of person we might call a traitor in real life, but on the big screen she is larger than life. She is the soul of appetite. And Qualley, an actress I've always liked (in roles like Manson's teenage hippie in “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” or Ann Reinking in “Fosse/Verdon”), now takes her charisma to the next level. Her Jamie is like Kristen Stewart crossed with Katharine Hepburn. She's like someone on a bender: with movie star lust and hunger. She's got a daring new hellfire to win.
“Drive-Away Dolls” is 84 minutes long and designed to be an easy-to-watch caper, but it's definitely a trifle. Ethan Coen shows a mastery of the nuts and bolts of escapist independent filmmaking, but given how long he's been at it, he doesn't work with much flair. One always had the sense that Joel was the visual wizard and that Ethan was the yin of common sense to Joel's extravagant yang.
But this contrast of sensibilities is manifested, in a fun way, through the central relationship of the film: the duel of wits that occurs between Jamie, who wants nothing.
Watch Drive-Away Dolls 2024 Movie Trailer
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