Opinion: ‘Drive-Away Dolls’ beat Florida’s right-wing politicians at their own game

Editor’s note: Noah Berlatsky (@nberlat) is a freelance writer in Chicago. The opinions expressed here are his own. View more opinion on CNN.

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Heist movies are about how fun it is to break the law, which means they often, to one degree or another, criticize the law.

In its less pointed form, as in the ocean franchise, heist movies suggest that capitalism is a big scam, so you might as well take what you can get if you’re cool enough (and look like George Clooney). But sometimes, as in the wonderful “Drive-Away Dolls” by Ethan Coen and Tricia Cooke, they are more adventurous. So, one can support not only those who are outside the law, but also a different law and a different world: in this case, a world in which homophobic Florida politicians are run out of the state with dildos ( metaphorically, more or less). )

Coen, best known for his collaborations with his brother. Joelco-wrote and co-directed “Drive-Away Dolls” with his wife and queer filmmaker, Cooke. The story is set in the early 2000s; Jamie (Margaret Qualley) has just broken up with his cop girlfriend, Sukie (Beanie Feldstein). His friend Marian (Geraldine Viswanathan) is tired of being single and fed up with her job.

So, they rent a car and head to Tallahassee to hang out with Marian’s aunt. But it turns out that the car they pick up has a smuggled suitcase and a mysterious smoking box. The suitcase and box are linked to a scandal involving conservative senator Gary Channel (Matt Damon), and he wants his things back. As the bad guys chase them, Jamie and Marian try to turn the situation around and beat the criminals at their own game, like in many heist movies.

The film has an effervescent camp feel quite different from the Coen brothers’ classic productions, from the psychedelic interludes to Jamie’s exaggerated Texas accent and libido. But even amid the fun and retro atmosphere, the script is clearly and deliberately aware of what’s happening in Florida right now.

When Jamie and Tricia see Sen. Channel on an aggressively heterosexual poster featuring his wife and children, Jamie breathes, “Lesbians, don’t let the sun go down on you here.” That is a reference to cities at sunset in the American Midwest, where all-white communities attack (mostly) black people through discrimination, beatings, or worse after dark. And while it might be an exaggeration to say that Florida was that Dangerous to queer people in the year 2000, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and his minions are doing everything they can to fulfill Jamie’s worst fears.

In recent years, DeSantis has passed what critics call “Don’t Say Gay” laws that prevent discussions about sexual orientation and gender identity in many Florida schools, resulting in mass protests. censorship of books in libraries and classrooms and, as expected, resulting in the resignation of LGBTQ teachers. Florida also has approved legislation that allows health care providers and insurers to deny care to LGBTQ people for “religious” reasons, and has made It is illegal for trans people to use bathrooms consistent with their gender identity.

Florida has also banned its residents from changing gender markers on driver’s licenses, meaning trans people’s IDs will not reflect their real identity. Many trans people will effectively be outed every time they show their license, leaving them vulnerable to further discrimination.

In short, the state is using the law to try to turn LGBTQ people, and especially trans people, into second-class citizens, who can be discriminated against in healthcare, employment, and even which bathrooms they use. As a parent, I am thinking twice, and more than twice, about whether my trans daughter can visit her grandparents in Florida given the current regime. It is not safe to visit a place where your existence is illegal.

“Drive-Away Dolls” takes place 20 years before DeSantis’ smug hateful regime was established. But the movie still gets energy and mileage from the feeling that simply showing queer people driving, living, and being horny in Florida is a bit of rainbow sparkle. thrown into the law’s satisfied smile.

Free-spirited Jamie and free-spirited Marian engage in some loitering, some extortion, some lewd use of stolen property, and maybe some public indecency as they dodge bullies and contradict the law. The real heist, however, is stealing the pleasure (from each other, from the senator’s embezzled assets, from a passing women’s soccer team) from a State and a world that wants them to disappear.

This isn’t the first lesbian heist movie to reject homophobic patriarchal law in its righteous moralism and run away with the money. The Wachowski Sisters’ “Bound” (1996), John McNaughton’s “Wild Things” (1998), also set in Florida, and the less overtly LGBTQ but still fairly obviously LGBTQ “Ocean’s 8” (2018), are all predecessors. “Drive-Away Dolls” is, however, the most joyous of the lot, arriving in Florida on screen with the windows rolled up, even as cops, governors and senators in the real world look on with increasingly sinister frowns. .

Heist movies can end in a grim bloodbath, like Tarantino’s “Reservoir Dogs” (1992), but many of them (like the Ocean films) are more lighthearted celebrations of a world where you can game the system and win. Coen and Cooke’s film is one of the purest expressions of the heist as a utopia in the genre. The fun thing about the heist movie is that the rules no longer apply; It offers an anarchic liberation, in which those who refuse to live by the law are rewarded with all the money. Money is good in “Drive-Away Dolls,” too, but it falls outside of the true promise, which is queer expression, queer community, queer love, and queer lust without being found guilty by a judge or a congressional delegation. .

The heart of the film is a flashback, mostly without dialogue, to Marian’s youth. Nowadays, Marian is less adventurous and less sex-driven than Jamie. But young Marian was obsessed with her neighbor naked and sunbathing, and she drilled a hole in her fence to watch her.

The scene is reminiscent of Norman spying on Marion in Hitchcock’s classic “Psycho” (1960), a brutally transphobic film about a heist gone wrong in which everyone involved is punished, both by karma and by the gendarmes. But there is no punishment for Marian (who might as well be named after her Hitchcockian predecessor). She looks and is happy, and nothing happens to her except that she grows up and gets her way.

“Drive-Away Dolls” tells the audience whether they look through that fence or not, that queerness, queer movies, queer art, and queer people are valuable, fun, and worthy heist. Even if, or especially if, DeSantis and Florida want to make them illegal.