Drive-Away Dolls
Starring Margaret Qualley, Geraldine Viswanathan and Beanie Feldstein
Rated MA15+
4.25/5
The first solo feature film by Ethan Coen (half of the iconic Coen Brothers), Drive-Away Dolls is an offbeat, touching roadtrip comedy.
In 1999, two lesbian best friends – the free-spirited Jamie (Margaret Qualley) and the closed-off Marian (Geraldine Viswanathan) – decide to move to Tallahassee, Florida together, but get tangled up in a criminal operation on the way.
Written by Coen and his wife Tricia Cooke, Drive-Away Dolls is a funny, endearing, character-rich film with a scintillating screenplay.
Qualley and Viswanathan have extraordinary chemistry, and the dialogue is endlessly witty but feels natural. Through cozy slow pacing sprinkled with danger, Marian and Jamie, who start the film as polar opposites, grow closer and progress as people amid adversity.
Jamie is pushy and reckless but cares deeply for Marian, and Marian slowly loosens up and becomes more adventurous. Joey Slotnick and C.J.
Wilson provide levity from a different angle as a bumbling criminal duo on the ladies’ trail, and if you’ve ever wondered what’s inside the briefcase in Pulp Fiction, Drive-Away Dolls offers perhaps the funniest answer possible.
Drive-Away Dolls has plenty of laugh-out-loud moments, vibrant cinematography and several brief animated interludes that evoke primitive nineties CGI (though some viewers may find these interludes irritating, along with some abrupt editing). It’s also good to see a sex-positive film about two lesbians in a mainstream cinema.
The sex scenes are hot without being explicit and aren’t exaggerated for our titillation; they are, first and foremost, a medium for the characters to bond.
Quirky, kinky, moving and very funny, Drive-Away Dolls is playing in select Victorian cinemas.
– Seth Lukas Hynes
