Achi news desk-
Critics are divided: lesbian road trip caper Drive-Away Dolls is either “furiously funny [and] helplessly horny” or “flaky and forgetful”. No doubt the same will be true for audiences – some will love it and others will hate it.
I enjoyed this solo outing by Coen’s brother (Ethan), co-created with his remarkable wife Tricia Cooke. But, rather than adding my voice to the critical polarization, I am more interested in its significance in the history of lesbian film in the United States, and its place as part of a genre of comedy lesbian films that defeat previous stereotypes.
Lesbians in US film
Lesbians have been treated badly in US cinema. We were wiped out in the era of the Hays Code – a series of censorship guidelines for film makers – which existed for 36 years (1930-1966). For nearly 40 years, lesbianism was unmarked and unnamed, only ever hinted at and mostly in negative ways.
The most famous example of this is Mrs. Danvers in Rebecca (1940), as the plain, repressed and twisted servant whose motives are morbidly inflamed with her beautiful, dead employer, Rebecca. Dracula’s Daughter (1936), the sequel to Dracula (1931), followed in this line of monstrous but silent lesbian villains.
The tragic lesbian was another trope, appearing in The Children’s Hour (1961) starring Audrey Hepburn and Shirley MacLaine. Feelings of shame, guilt and self-loathing accompany any hint of romantic lesbian feelings, as MacLaine later sadly discussed in the documentary The Celluloid Closet.
The New Queer Cinema of the 1990s blew up the script, naming and shaming lesbians. Films such as Go Fish (Rose Troche, 1994), The Watermelon Woman (Cheryl Dunye, 1996) and High Art (Lisa Cholodenko, 1998) left stereotypes far behind as young, ethnically diverse women told their own stories. The focus was on their friendship as well as their romantic and sexual relationships. Still, these were low-budget independent films seen by few outside of film festivals and the lesbian and queer community.
Although there have been advances in television representations of lesbians with series such as the L Word and its sequel, Generation Q – among many others – has been slower to catch up with film.
Some exceptions are quality historical dramas such as Carol (Todd Haynes, 2015), Ammonite (Francis Lee, 2020) and Portrait of a Lady on Fire (Céline Sciamma, 2019). Although these are valuable contributions to the queer film canon, no one has much fun, and characters are consigned to tragic endings determined by the context of the historical periods in which they are set. in them.
When lesbians gain access to storytelling production methods, we show the humor and sense of play that has been missing in film, consigning the tragic trope to the bin. Lesbian spy film DEBS (2004), cult comedy But I’m a Cheerleader (1999) and sci-fi film Codependent Space Alien Seeks Same (2011) are all very silly and very funny.
The recent gay comedy Bottoms (2023) also has a lot of fun with its characters, as two young college women start their own self-defense fight club in an attempt to become popular and get more sex. And hot on its heels now is Drive-Away Dolls, in the form of a lesbian road movie.
Drive Away Dolls: fun-loving dykes
This brief history of lesbians on screen shows that when gay women tell their own stories in the comedy genre, things are much more fun for everyone. Drive-Away Dolls certainly fits into this category of lesbian comedy that refuses to take itself seriously.
Two “odd couples”, good-time dyke Jamie (a sly Margaret Qualley) and book-loving introvert Marian (a hilariously straight-faced Geraldine Viswanathan) take a road trip together using a drive-away (hire) car. . Jamie focuses on visiting as many lesbian bars on the road in her attempt to help Marian get more sex, after a fallow period following a breakup with her boyfriend.
The two are initially oblivious to a parallel plot involving a mysterious suitcase in the boot (they’ve been given the wrong car), chased by failed, violent thieves to recover the case, and a hypocritical Republican politician (played by Matt Damon) whose reputation depends on retrieving the “goods” in the case.
All these plot points provide the ingredients for a comic lesbian road movie caper. There are many phallic gags and the film is deliberately ridiculous (pun intended). Drive-Away Dolls is incredibly silly, as the jumbled B-movie style transitions and psychedelic inserts underscore.
While the film has been marketed as a Coen brother film with Ethan in the director’s chair, it is as much Cooke’s (Coen’s editor-producer’s wife) film as his. The idea for the film came from her students’ memories of a road trip with a friend.
Drive-Away Dolls was originally Drive-Away Dykes before the production company demanded the change, and Cooke’s strange worldview dominates the nostalgia for lesbian bars and the riotous sex scenes. But Coen’s signature humor, convoluted plot, deeply flawed male characters and progressive genre tropes (in this case, exploitation films from the 1960s and 1970s) are happy testimony.
The relationship between the two filmmakers is as interesting as the film. Cooke is openly queer and she and Coen remain happily married, while both are in relationships with other people. Theirs is a creative partnership, working together on the script, directing and editing. It feels a little out of place in a film that celebrates lesbian culture and ends the patriarchy, Coen is credited as the sole director – but that says more about the industry than their partnership.
This very different husband-and-wife team are now working on their follow-up, Honey Don’t, which will follow the pulpy vibe of Drive-Away Dolls. Although the critics may be snooty about its quality, I’m looking forward to it.
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