Coen co-wrote “Dolls” with his openly lesbian wife Tricia Cooke. Although Cooke had been frank about her sexuality, she and Coen have been married since 1993, and have had two kids together. The details of their personal lives have only recently been made public. Cooke has also served as an editor and as an associate producer on many of the Coen Bros. movies. She and Ethan have been cooking up a lesbian road trip crime comedy for many years, and their original title for the film was “Drive-Away Dykes.” Though Ethan has the sole directing credit in the final cut, reports have stated that Cooke was essentially a co-director in addition to her co-writing duties.
This movie marks Ethan Coen’s second time as a solo director without his brother Joel, having previously directed the 2022 documentary “Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble In Mind.” It’s also the first narrative film that Ethan has made since 2018’s “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs,” a film that made him burn out on filmmaking a little bit.
Having now seen both “Drive-Away Dolls” and Joel’s solo directorial effort “The Tragedy of Macbeth,” one can see what each brother may have brought to the table. Joel was the moody intellectual, apparently bringing a sense of sardonic bleakness to his works. Ethan, conversely, seems to have brought the colorful, humorous quirkiness and outsize characters. That balance — between clueless lovable weirdos and apocalyptic hubris — was what made the Coen Bros. unique.
Remove the bleakness, and one comes away with “Drive-Away Dolls,” a film no darker than a pitcher of lemonade. Dated or not, it’s still going to be refreshing under the right circumstances, and grand to see queerness flung so gleefully about.
/Film Rating: 7.5 out of 10