I want to live in an alternate universe where “Drive-Away Dolls” is terrific — a sex-positive, violence-positive queer-sploitation gasser. In this universe? It’s just all right.
This is the first solo directorial project from Ethan Coen, brother and longtime creative partner of Joel Coen. Twenty-two years ago, Ethan wrote the screenplay with his wife Tricia Cooke, who has edited many of the Coen brothers’ films. After a few close calls, it didn’t get made. Until now.
Often a long-waylaid movie comes out of the drawer smelling a little musty. That isn’t the case with this one, or the problem. I hate to throw out something spoken by Joel Coen, who was not involved with the project, but he once said that directing is a matter of two words: tone management. (He’s downplaying the visual part, but whatever.) “Drive-Away Dolls” constitutes a freewheeling mashup of crime thriller, an odd-couple friendship on the road to Tallahassee and a dark comedy of errors. According to Cooke, the idea was to make a “lesbian genre movie” that felt playful, “free and fun.” It does when it’s working. When it’s not — when the brutality feels off, or the verbal jokes curdle — it doesn’t.
Jamie (Margaret Qualley) is the free spirit of the central duo, recently busted up with her humorless policewoman partner (Beanie Feldstein) and ready for distraction. Uptight, relatively sexually inexperienced Marian (Geraldine Viswanathan) has plans for a road trip to Florida to visit her aunt.
Jamie invites herself along. After an instigating mix-up with a guy called Curlie (Bill Camp, a welcome deadpan surrounded by smart actors straining for laughs), the women embark on a one-way drive in a used car containing mysterious stuff in the trunk they’re to deliver to an unknown recipient. It’s a mistake; the car’s intended drivers, criminals both, chase them all the way down to Florida.
Set in 1999, with Y2K jitters in the air, the movie runs 70-some minutes without its end credits, hopping from episode to episode. Jamie wants to get her buttoned-down friend in bed with someone, as soon as possible, just to break her dry spell. Colman Domingo pops in for a few scenes, as the overseer of the two men (C.J. Wilson and Joey Slotnick) in pursuit of the goods. Matt Damon shows up later as a right-wing Florida senator potentially implicated by what’s in the suitcase. En route, Jamie and a reluctant Marian make out with an entire female volleyball team, and begin to realize they, Jamie and Marian, might be more than just friends.
The result sounds loose and inviting, but as directed by Coen its brand of craziness feels weirdly clenched and methodical. I wish it were messier; we need more B movies unafraid of pulp and trashy diversion. I saw “Drive-Away Dolls” immediately after a press screening of “Dune: Part Two,” and believe you me, I was ready for some peppy ‘sploitation.
But straight off, in the prologue, there’s Pedro Pascal, a first-rate versatile actor, forcing his panicky reactions like a second-rater. How? Why? He’s so good! But not here. Only Viswanathan, wonderful in “Hala” and others, comes close to locating a tone that makes some human sense inside this wildly uneven material, careening all across the character-to-caricature spectrum.
mjphillips@chicagotribune.com
“Drive-Away Dolls” — 2 stars (out of 4)
MPA rating: R (for crude sexual content, full nudity, language and some violent content)
Running time: 1:24
How to watch: Premieres in theaters Feb. 22
