In 1999, Jamie (Qualley) and Marian (Viswanathan) take a “drive-away” rental car job from Philadelphia to Tallahassee — and get mixed up with some dodgy characters.
Drive-Away Dolls was originally called ‘Drive-Away Dykes’ — a far better, funnier, and frankly more accurate title than the marketing- friendly one eventually settled on. (That original title is even cheekily acknowledged in the closing credits.) Because this film is, to use the technical parlance, hella lesbian: from the comedy-cunnilingus found in the opening five minutes to the “very committed lesbians” of a college soccer team, Dolls wears its sapphic colours loud and proud.
That’s notable, given that this is a Coen brother film, singular. Directed by Ethan Coen (his first without bigger brother Joel, if you don’t count his 2022 Jerry Lee Lewis documentary), and co-written by Coen and his wife Tricia Cooke, who is queer, there is a unique energy here which can’t be found in any of the previous 18 films from the brothers. It has a specificity, in subject matter and period, that feels refreshing, a rare example of the Coen-canon that centres female, gay characters...