Driving you away

Simply put, it’s a ‘lesbian rom-com’ drama belted out by one half of Coen brothers. Together, Joel and Ethan have given us fun movies like ‘Fargo’, ‘The Big Lebowski’, ‘Where Art Thou?’ and the crime thriller, ‘No Country for Old Men’. They started delivering solo projects 2020 onwards and ‘Drive-Away Dolls’ marks Ethan’s second solo project. This is also his first attempt at crime comedy, only the crime is benign.

It opens with a short and sweet cameo by actor Pedro Pascal and a hint of crime. Throughout the rest of the film, we only get to see Pascal’s head. From there on, the screen shifts to actresses Margaret Qualley and Geraldine Viswanathan, who play best friends Jamie and Marian, and happen to be lesbians.

The film is set in Philadelphia. Jamie is thrown out of the apartment she shares with her lover Susie, a police officer. While Jamie has no place to go, Marian is leaving town. Following much prodding by Jamie, Marian, an uptight personality lost in the world of books, agrees to avail a drive-away car service to visit her aunt in Florida. But the plan goes south as they pick a wrong car containing some cargo and the decapitated head of Pascal. Some criminals follow them to get their package back and that unfolds a chain of comedic events.

You can see that Qualley loved portraying Jamie and having fun with several women through the course of the film. To see anyone with brown skin leading in western films is heartening as a sign of how far inclusivity has arrived. But Viswanathan doesn’t stay true to her character; there is no chemistry between the two.

Susie is an oddball of emotions and her graph from a sobbing lover dealing with heartbreak to a raging ex and an angry officer really cracks you up. While the R-rated movie spells raunchy, it also has the quirkiness and absurdness of a typical Coen outing. Though not suited for family viewing, floating a movie like that amid male-dominated narratives is a step up, especially when it is being projected as a trilogy.

The screenplay is as weak as it is unpredictable. Just like Jamie’s detours, viewers never come to know where the narrative is taking them. There are psychedelic scenes, with Miley Cyrus making an appearance sometimes. Their purpose? Can’t say. What makes sense is the runtime of just over one-and-a-half hours.

‘Love is sleigh ride to hell,’ Jamie paints on their drive-away car. With your best friend in the passenger seat, the film guarantees that the ride wouldn’t be so bad, even if the destination is hell. It’s a fun film, but skip it if you don’t have a funny bone for lesbian jokes, sex puns and Coen’s style.