2024 is finally the year where new movies are for the girls and the gays. We kicked off the year right with Mean Girls, starring bisexual singer and actress, Reneé Rapp, as Regina George and Auliʻi Cravalho as a confirmed-as-a-lesbian Janis Ian. This year’s Sundance festival was full of stories less told, such as Ponyboi, the story of an intersex sex worker running from the mob, and Layla, a film about an Arab drag queen falling in love for the first time. As for theatrical releases, there are plenty of those too. From an action-filled comedy about two queer women on the road trip of their lives to the dark love story that gave us Kristen Stewart’s Rolling Stone cover shoot that has the world on its knees, we have evolved past LGBTQ+ stories just being about cheesy forbidden romance and coming out of the closet to an unforgiving world. Drive Away Dolls proves that for us.
Drive Away Dolls, directed by Ethan Coen, follows Jamie (Margaret Qualley), a free spirit recovering from a breakup with her girlfriend, and her best friend Marian (Geraldine Viswanathan), a modest girl who needs to loosen up. The duo goes on an impromptu road trip to Tallahassee searching for some change and freedom. Their adventure takes a turn when they run into a group of criminals along the way.
The script for the movie was originally written in the ’90s under a different name, but was scrapped because they thought it had little potential. We have Coen’s wife, Tricia Cooke, to thank for its revival. This stems from the fact that Cooke was fed up with the lack of lesbian representation in movies, being one herself. Regarding the writing of the film, Cooke says, “I kind of represent the queer world. All of the bumbling men in the movie and all of the caper stuff definitely comes from Ethan’s mind.” The two worlds come together to create an action-filled comedy for everyone to enjoy.
Cooke and Coen’s nontraditional marriage was credited as inspiration for the movie. The pair are married with two kids, but Cooke identifies as a lesbian and both have other partners outside of their marriage. They’ve been together since 1990 and have made it work. Drive Away Dolls was originally written as a way for the two to bond and spend more time together. Coen says that Cooke is “queer and sweet and I’m straight and stupid.” The two’s differences come together to give perspective in their writing, which is seen in their new hit.
With cameos from celebrities such as Pedro Pascal and Matt Damon, this movie takes a turn from Ethan Coen’s past works. Coen wrote most of his other movies with his brother, Joel Coen, sometimes under the shared pen name “Roderick Jaynes.” The pair’s films were often comedies, such as Fargo (1996), The Big Lebowski (1998), and The Hudsucker Proxy (1994). The Coens also wrote the occasional drama, like Miller’s Crossing (1990), a mob drama that cemented Steve Buscemi, Jon Polito, and John Turturro as regular faces in the brothers’ movies. Drive Away Dolls flips the script in the form of having two lesbian main characters and multiple wild sex scenes.
So far, Drive Away Dolls is rated 65% on Rotten Tomatoes. Some say the film is slow and stale, but others call it a queer masterpiece. With reviews this mixed, you have to see the movie and make your own judgments! The movie hit theaters on Feb. 23, 2024, and has made $4.6 million at the time of writing this article.