Shades of Raising Arizona as Ethan Coen f lies solo with an absolute hoot
Drive-Away Dolls (R16, 84 mins) Directed by Ethan Coen Reviewed by Graeme Tuckett ****
Two young women decide to take a road trip from Philadelphia to Tallahassee, Florida. Jamie has just broken up with her policewoman girlfriend and is looking for a bit of fun and adventure, while Marian needs to visit an aunt down south, for reasons that made perfect sense to me a few hours ago, but which escape me now.
Complicating matters enormously for Jamie and Marian, they are in the wrong car. There was a mix-up at the rental agency, courtesy of the magnificently phlegmatic and disinterested Curly, and the women have unintentionally driven away in a sedan intended for a couple of garrulous thugs who are employed by a nasty piece of work known only as “Chief’’.
Which might explain why there is a mysterious briefcase and a severed head in the trunk – and not the spare wheel the women were expecting when they pulled over to change a flat somewhere in South Carolina.
The head belonged to Pedro Pascal, who we met – carrying the briefcase – during the deranged opening minutes of DriveAway Dolls, before he was dispatched via a wine-knife to the jugular. And now the men who wielded that knife are hot on the trail of Jamie and Marian – and Drive-Away Dolls is launched into its commendably economical running time like it has somewhere to be and a pretty good idea of how to get there.
The two women are chalk-and-cheese, which is, I guess, how we know DriveAway Dolls will eventually turn into a rom-com, after happily cycling through three or four other genres on the way to landing on true love.
Drive-Away Dolls is directed by Ethan Coen – one-half of the Coen brothers – from a script he co-wrote with his wife Tricia Cooke.
Margaret Qualley (Once Upon a Time In Hollywood) plays Jamie with a drawl and an approach to life that is pure Texas. There are moments in this film where I would swear Qualley is channelling the energy of a young Matthew McConaughey, if McConaughey had been reborn as a millennial lesbian with seriously great taste in T-shirts.
Next to Qualley, Geraldine Viswanathan (Blockers) is a lower-key presence as Marian, but she brings a bemused stoicism to Marian which works a treat.
Around the two leads, Ethan has flipped through his contacts list and – in addition to Pascal – turned up Colman Domingo (Zola), Beanie Feldstein (Booksmart), Miley Cyrus, Matt actual Damon and the great Bill Camp to fill out the support roles.
Watching a film that Ethan Coen has directed without the influence of brother Joel, it’s fun to look back over the Coens’ filmography and think which titles are “one of Ethan’s”. The brothers famously co-direct all their projects, no matter which one is credited as director.
Drive-Away Dolls reminded me mightily of Raising Arizona and O Brother Where Art Thou at times, with dashes of A Serious Man and Burn After Reading, if you stand back and squint.
Australian DOP Ari Wegner – who shot Stray and The Power of the
Dog in Aotearoa – keeps everything appropriately bright and goofy, surely consciously mining Barry Sonnenfeld’s incredible work on Raising Arizona.
Drive-Away Dolls is a hoot. It takes a lot of talent and time to make something look this gorgeously dumb and dashed off, and everyone on screen and behind the camera has clearly had fun making this.
In the mostly illegible notebook I take into screenings, I can make out the words, “It’s Repo-Man does Blue Is The Warmest Colour”. If that means anything at all to you, then I reckon you’ll enjoy DriveAway Dolls just fine.
Drive-Away Dolls is screening in select cinemas nationwide.
It takes a lot of talent and time to make something look this gorgeously dumb and dashed off.