DRIVE-AWAY DOLLS may be another proof of the universe’s entropy. You know, the rule that posits everything is slowly devolving into a state of disarray and incoherence. Or something along those lines. This effort by Ethan Coen certainly shows flashes of the oddball genius of the films he made with his brother, Joel, but the tense energy and visual acuity of those genre-spanning works is gone. Instead, we have outstanding performances by Margaret Qualley and Geraldine Viswanathan in a film that is lackadaisical instead of wry, and cliché instead of sharp-edged as it pays ham-handed homage to other, better films. Think KISS ME DEADLY, PULP FICTION, or REPO MAN. What we have here is more like a proof-of-concept than a finished work.
Qualley and Viswanathanin are Jamie and Marian, two lesbians fleeing Pittsburgh for a chance to start fresh in Tallahassee, where, as Marian keeps reminding us, there is Spanish moss and oak trees. Jamie, an extrovert with no filter and a blithe carnality, has just been thrown out by her girlfriend, Sukie (Beanie Feldstein), and Marian, an introvert who overthinks everything into suffocating inaction, including her carnality, has reached an impasse in her personal and professional life. Constitutionally unable to stop her, Marion is swept up into Jamie’s plans to go skip town, with south as good as anyplace else. This is done by obtaining the eponymous drive-way car to get them to the land of Spanish moss and oak trees. They drive for free in exchange for delivering the vehicle, a Dodge Aries, by the next day to the contract holder. Little do they realize that there’s more than just the car scheduled for delivery. For reasons not adequately explained, there is a little something extra hidden in the trunk, and the two extraneous pieces of luggage will wreak havoc on any and all that come into contact with them.
Marian plots a straight line on the map, Jamie plots to take in the sights, including the world’s largest Dixie cup. They may not make it to that roadside attraction, but they do take too long getting to their destination as Jamie finds irresistible sexual adventures and just as irresistible down-home cooking along the way. When they don’t show up on time, the receiver of the car and its baggage, The Chief (Coleman Domingo), sends his two goons (Joey Slotnick and C.J. Wilson) who, like the women they are pursuing, have very different, and mutually exclusive, views on life, art, and just getting along. Before you get your hopes up about their debates on those subjects, let me tell you that, spoiler alert, there is no revelations about what an item of fast food is called in France. Or anywhere else, for that matter.
Any similarities to better films only serve to show how DRIVE AWAY DOLLS diminishes in comparison. The dialogue is, ahem, pedestrian, though the way Qualley throws herself into that Texas twang and enviable joie de vivre elevates it, as does Viswanathanin ‘s bottled-up angst expressed through a clenched body, sotto voice, and deadpan expression. Her eyes, though, are hyperalert, both wary and weary as their owner suffers through her determined passivity and general discomfort with her own desires.
There is violence aplenty, starting with Pedro Pascal in the opening as a man refusing to give up a silver attaché case that forms part of the McGuffin. He ends badly, with much spurting of blood, as do others in the course of the story. Yet the shock factor intended has the threadbare of déjà-vu. The efforts to be quirky and/or oblique feel forced, particularly with the psychedelic interludes, which do pay off, and flashbacks to Marian’s childhood crush on the woman next door who sunbathes au naturel, which do not.
DRIVE-AWAY DOLLS is talky without the sparkle of innovation or narrative, ahem, drive. It is irksome when it thinks it’s being clever, dull as the plot points we expect show up on schedule without anything innovative to liven them up. Even worse, its attempts at eroticism are just as dull. Wild abandon is performative, surrender to seduction is perfunctory. If this had been made in 1999, when it is set, it might have been hailed as refreshingly bold. Still, this ain’t no DESERT HEARTS. In 2024, it fails to be anything but an uneven and disjointed shadow of its betters traversing well-traveled ground.
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