“ One nous in two organic structure ” is how some have described the working kinship between Joel and Ethan Coen . But since American movie house ’s most celebrated sibling deed has disband , with each brother embarking on his own separate writing and directing life history , it ’s become increasingly tempting to represent that purportedly portion out head by quarter-circle — to determine where one Coen ’s aesthesia terminate and the other ’s begins . Joel ’s solo debut , The Tragedy of Macbeth , certainly encouraged such speculation . In offering a decidedly straight adaptation of The Scottish turn , the filmmaker enliven suspicions that he was the Gallant to his brother ’s Goofus — the serious man behindA Serious Man , the one supply the tragical side of their famously tragicomic par . Or to put it another direction : WasMacbethproof that Ethan is the funny one ?
Reductive though that binary may sound , raw grounds supports it . Feast your eyes , accordingly , uponDrive - Away Dolls , the first narrative movie Ethan Coen has made without Joel . ( He co - write it instead with his wife , Tricia Cooke , who edited several of the chum ’ joint features . ) There ’s nothing straight about this raunchy , fitfully screaming caper , a lesbian road movie as cartoonishly godless as Joel’sMacbethwas haunt and somber . It ’s the sappy Coen creation in decades — and also the most rasping around the edges , implying that peradventure one of these brothers was more responsible than the other for the supreme conventional command we ’d come to tie in with the plural Coen canyon .
Ethan sets a madcap tone now with extreme angles and music hall gags ( like a trash can lid hurled offscreen , remove a screeching unseen African tea ) . The prologue deposit the natural action in the Philly of 1999 , where valet of the consequence Pedro Pascal goes full Looney Tunes as a extortioner with a briefcase , meeting his grim end in an back street . If you ’ve ever wondered whatOberyn Martell ’s deathmight looking like if it was diddle for slapstick gag , enquire no longer .
That briefcase terminate up in the trunk of a car . Behind the wheel , via a massive misunderstanding , are queer pals Jamie ( Poor Thingssupporting instrumentalist Margaret Qualley ) and Marian ( Geraldine Viswanathan ) , who are ship on an impromptu road trip to Tallahassee , Florida . The two are a classical unmated couple : the kooky , impulsive , bed - hopping firecracker paired off with the uptight , sexually frustrated killjoy . Their opposites - attract chemistry , silly and sexy in equal measure , reassure that this comedy could always go frombuddytoromantic .
The picture show cuts away from the pair ’s episodic mishap — a run - in with the constabulary , a slumber political party with a giggle lesbian association football team — to follow the bumbling quest of a couplet of equally mismatch goons , played by C.J. Wilson and Joey Slotnick , who are ferment for a gangster ( newly minted Oscar nominee Colman Domingo ) . ThinkFargo ’s bickering kidnapper , only more unskilled and less dangerous . Their scenes seesaw between sublimely dazed and even stupid . There ’s one inspired mo where Beanie Feldstein , as Jamie ’s scorned ex , tucker the living hell out of one of them while the other sedately question her about the locomote charwoman ’s whereabouts . We ’re a long means from the tight structure of even something as daft asRaising Arizona . This might be the first Coen brother undertaking that could be confused for the work of a Farrelly comrade .
That say , the nut drollery is very Joel and Ethan ( or , it ’s now perhaps clear , just very Ethan ) . It’svisual as well as verbal : Dogs leap through the background of shots , performances go bug - eyed , and even the scene transition get in on the physical clowning , with the form not so much wiped as crash or sweep on hinges . Is this the kind of movie Ethan has always wanted to make ? It seems to be in a amusing universe not far removed from 1985’sCrimewave , the “ lost ” Stoogian farce the Coens compose for Sam Raimi .
At its good , Drive - Away Dollsis unabashedly unsportsmanlike and — as teased by its existent title , which subsDolls for Dykes — unapologetically expose . Every charwoman we fill is merry and out of the closet . While few Hollywood sex comedies even know distaff desire , this one is only concerned in it . Even the MacGuffin , aPulp Fiction - stylebriefcase , turns out to be a ribald joke . Coen and Cooke flip off Florida conservatives ( embodied by a movie star only a filmmaker of this reputation could secure ) without a breath of winking ego - righteousness . The time - warp delight of the movie is that its sexual politics are casually mod , while its sense of humour feel unfashionable , like something from an alternate timeline where crackpot funniness had retentive mainstream leg .
And yet the film teeters on the edge of prostration , too . Its frenzied nuttiness can be labored , and there ’s a making - it - up - as - we - go - along calibre to the flyweight - noir plotting . What holds it together , if only barely sometimes , is Qualley ’s whizz bit — a supernova of drawl Texas charm and loco libido . The dear story is as tossed off as anything else in the script , but she sells it with jubilant nonchalance . Viswanathan has it harder , as she ’s stuck act the stick in the mud , but she once in a while occur alive with cool , as during a sexy sex picture — the one moment in the movie that purport for elegance and restraint .
On the whole , Drive - off Dollshas more moxie than discipline . Despite the decades of experience between its Creator , it really does feel like a directorial entry — messy , but foretell . If there ’s a certain delight to seeing Ethan let his freak flag fly , the nagging touch the movie leaves you with is that two Coens are better than one . Of naturally , one might arrive at the same conclusion after Joel’sMacbeth , which is so unlike from this movie that it suggest a clean split in originative preoccupation . Where Goofus meets Gallant , the true magic happens .
