At The Movies: Wackiness and wonder in The Projector exclusives Drive-Away Dolls and Here

Drive-Away Dolls (R21)

84 minutes, June 8, 16, 22 and 28 at The Projector
3 stars

The story: Circa 1999 America, 20something lesbian Jamie (Margaret Qualley) and her bookish roommate Marian (Geraldine Viswanathan) set off from Philadelphia to Florida on an impromptu jaunt with moronic mobsters (Colman Domingo, Joey Slotnick and C.J. Wilson) in pursuit. Unbeknown to the girls, there is illicit cargo in their rented car.

American film-maker Ethan Coen, one-half of the Coen Brothers creative team with Joel, has a new partner for his first solo fictional feature as director.

Drive-Away Dolls is showing at The Projector’s Pink Screen festival. It is co-produced and co-written by Coen’s wife Tricia Cooke, who identifies as queer, and the cross-country buddy caper is a bawdy escapade that is proudly sapphic.

It detours into lesbian bars, sex toys, and crazy and wanton sex, plus an epic make-out session with a female soccer team. While the bumbling hitmen and suspicious briefcase are a familiar combo from the Coen Brothers’ Fargo (1996) and No Country For Old Men (2007), the contents of the case here will be X-rated.

As is Jamie’s language, which otherwise preserves the brothers’ florid archness.

Jamie wants to help lonesome Marian open up. Qualley grows wearisome fast, with her Texan twang as aggressive as her libido, but Viswanathan is thankfully a real find, playing the deadpan foil.

The comedy, in all its vulgar zaniness, tries too hard to shock and to compel you to laugh. Coen and Cooke seem to be making it up as they barrel along. They are aiming low, and it is impossible at the very least to not admire the cheerful trashiness.

Hot take: The wacky road trip is either a sex-positive joyride or a car wreck, crass and slapdash. Your mileage will vary.

Here (PG)

90 minutes, opens on June 6 at The Projector
3 stars

The story: Stefan (Stefan Gota) is a Romanian construction worker living in Belgium’s capital of Brussels and Shuxiu (Liyo Gong) is a Belgian-Chinese doctoral student. Their paths cross for a potential romance.

Stefan is moving back home. With the leftover vegetables in his fridge, he cooks a pot of borscht for his friends.

Why borscht? Why not, say, Romania’s traditional sour leek soup?

Here by Flemish writer-director Bas Devos (Ghost Tropic, 2019) affords plenty of time for such stray thoughts as Stefan casually visits co-workers and his nurse sister (Alina Constantin) to share his farewell potage, and then wanders his insomniac nights alone. There is a restlessness to him that their companionship cannot quell.

But this is an unhurried character piece, and it will not be until 45 minutes in, when Stefan stops by a Chinese eatery (ironically named The Long March) for takeaway one rainy evening, that he encounters Shuxiu.

They will meet only twice. The second time is in a forest within the city, where he chances upon her on all fours. Shuxiu is a bryologist intently collecting specimens for her study of moss, and the movie, shot on 16mm, applies the same loving attentiveness to the sunlight filtering through, the birds chirping, the buzzing bees and the two strangers drawing closer. Together, they examine in intimate wonderment the plant spores gathered in the palm of her hand.

Moss is a rootless organism adaptable to the environment. It is a metaphor for the solitary transplants Stefan and Shuxiu, much as the title is an invitation to the viewer to cease chasing a conventional movie narrative and be in the here-and-now of nature and human connection.

Hot take: The pleasures in this delicate miniature are simple but profound.