Margaret Qualley Sizzles In Ethan Coen’s Noir

Cinema is a collaborative medium, and as such, there have been many realization teams strewn throughout the history of cinema. As with any collaboration, there is no guarantee that the group will be together forever, and sometimes the teams actually separate. The Coen, Ethan and Joel brothers, underwent such a creative break towards the beginning of this decade, the two men moving to their own films from each other. Unlike certain creative separations, however, the post-row works of Coen could not be more different from each other. Where Joel made Macbeth’s “The tragedy” by Macbeth “from 2021, an austere and intensely intense adaptation that recalled Ingmar Bergman and Carl Theodor Dreyer, Ethan teamed up with his wife Tricia Cooke to make” badlands “. The previous interest of Coens for dry humor and black film.

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At the release of “Dolls”, Coen declared that he and Cooke foresee a “Trilogy of Lesbian film B,” And a little more than a year later, the second film of this thematic trilogy arrived: “Chérie is not!” Appointed workforce for Carl Perkins’ song from 1956 (which was re -recorded by dozens of artists such as The Beatles and Wanda Jackson, the version of the latter presenting itself in this film), the film is another modern riff on classical black, and which is without suspicion sapphic. However, where the long-term “dolls” seemed a little self-reflexive in its tone, recalling the previous efforts of Coen Brothers like “The Big Lebowski” and “Burn After Reading”, “Honey Don’t!” feels much more unique. Of course, there are a lot of non-seventies, a little impassive humor and flashy shooting compositions, but for the most part, the film is a more ambiguous and more indie flavored affair. He plays as if Allison Anders directed a rewriting of Jim Jarmusch of a Shane Black script which adapted an old novel Raymond Chandler or Dashiell Hammett. With this attractive approach, Coen and Cooke make “Honey you!” An impressive, sexy and idiosyncratic black, which becomes even more engaging thanks to a lead performance by Margaret Qualley.

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“Darling is not!” Starts with what looks like a splashing sequence on paper: a beautiful mysterious bomb (Lera Abova), wearing any leopard print, approaches a car that recently crushed on the side of a distant highway, with the driver’s corpse, a young girl, inside. In addition to not being clear if this woman caused the fatal accident or not, the mystery deepens when she removes a single ring of the hand of the dead girl, then will swim in a neighboring lake before leaving on her motorcycle. The ring presents a particular type of cross on it, which we soon learn is the logo of a local church called the four -track temple, led by Pastor Drew Devlin (Chris Evans). When local private investigator Honey O’Donahue (Qualley) is informed by his local police detective contactor, Marty (Charlie Day), of the death of the girl and realizes that she had tried to hire her a few days earlier, she takes on herself to search the city and to see what shady transactions could have led to this premature resignation.

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As classic as this configuration for the story is, Coen and Cooke (which, as with “Drive-Away Dolls”, have probably co-directed this film without credit also) avoid any glitter or glamor shot that we could expect to see it, especially if it was a Shane Black film or Quentin Tarantino. Instead, the directors decide to dip the full atmosphere of the film in a small-city despair stew, an aesthetic that the film’s opening credits clearly make, hiding the names of the filmmakers in the signaling in the streets of Bakersfield (California (a little graphic design that Coen was inspired by “We Getta by John Huston.” A word too strong, because the characters do not feel so desperate to escape Bakersfield because they have exhausted it, having resigned to their fate years ago. Boredom.

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The sun around which “Honey is not!” Orbits is Qualley, which proves once again what immense talent it is with this performance. Of course, the actress has a beauty and magnetism possessed by many stars, but it becomes clear with each appearance how she has the actress as a character actress. It is difficult to choose two Qualley roles that seem like; Admittedly, there is a large gap between the dishes eager to please, obsessed with the image of “the substance” and the attitude without frills, to take away or to see Jamie in “Drive-Away Dolls”. Honey makes another character feather in the Qualley filmography cap, the actress giving off a remarkable mixture of confidence and insight. Of course, honey is dressed like women on covers of novels of vintage paste crime: high heels, tight and colorful dresses, etc. However, he is never exaggerated, with costume designer Peggy Schnitzer keeping honey rooted in small town modes while looking fantastic.

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It is an approach that compliments the treatment with Coen and Cooke of the character of Honey, which is more anchored than otherwise. It would have been an easy crutch to give to honey (and the other characters) a bite of super stylized hard dialogue, but the writers put on the needle to keep things realistic but allowing it to always have a snapshot. All the actors make a meal from this approach; Evans has fun once again playing a Sleazeball, Day is an endearing mixture of excited and distraught, and Aubrey Plaza brings her special approach to the left of MG, a cop who becomes the Honey lover. But it is Qualley who takes the reins of the film so completely that it would always be a pleasure to watch even if there was no one else.

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It is so wonderful to have a genre film to feel it personalized and to be as insufficient to serve an IP or to please the crowd that it can be easy to forget your shortcomings. The most blatant of them is the fact that, despite believing a dark comedy (and throwing veterans from Sitcom Plaza, Day and Billy Eichner), “Honey Don’t!” Isn’t that so hilarious. Of course, there is a handful of laughter to have, and it is possible for an exuberant audience to increase the funny factor of the film. However, the gags of the film are more likely to arouse a smile understood than a laugh of the belly. This creative choice which serves the film – Coen and Cooke so well by taking over the too cooked black dialogue – has a setback of the way the characters stand out and intelligent but not as much as getting more than a smile.

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It is not as if Coen does not try, because he gives the pastor Drew an unhappy henchman (Josh Pafchek) who looks like Idiaux toads seen in many Coen Brothers films, “Raising Arizona” in “Fargo”, and it is fun to see him and another character to do so many mistakes while trying to make a blow. However, Coen and Cooke seem to be hellbent on maintaining a close control in the tone of the film, and that means that we do not get the wacky and slightly slightly out of control of the previous films of Coen Brothers, or even the much more moving “dolls”. It is a small complaint, of course, but to put it in terms of Coen Brothers, the film seems to be taken between “No Country for Old Men” and “Burn After Lise”, neither too dark nor too caricatured.

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Overall, however, what the film is lacking by laughing more than compensating with a backup of the hip which permeates each frame. The sexuality of the film – which is mainly lesbian – is just as frank as in “dolls by car”, but less scandalous. When “Dolls” dealt with sexual questions in a similar way to a sexual comedy (due to this sub-genre being one of the many types of exploitation films with which the film has played), “Honey” is more earth-to-earth. Even the continuous heterosexual dallinations of Pastor Drew, as some could be, like some of them, have honest awkwardness for them. The physical comfort of Honey and MG one extends to the film itself: there is a post-co-organal scene where the pierced nipple of MG is exposed for a long uninterrupted blow, but ultimately the whole concept of titillation fades in the background, allowing us to find a level of intimacy and similar understanding with these women as they find each other.

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Black is a very malleable genre; This is the one Coen has tried several times before, of course. However, it is difficult to think of another recent film Black which is so quietly but perverse engaging, this Down time but without effort. It would be necessary to return in the 1970s, with films like “The Long Goodbye” by Robert Altman or the 1990s, with films like “The Last Seduction”, or a decade ago, with Criminal Sweeen of 2015 “Too late”. Fortunately, Coen and Cooke gave us the example of this decade of such a film with “Honey Don’t!,” A film that may seem light at first sight, but has a wonderfully rich effect, like the smell of cigarette smoke rassis forever trapped in the walls of a dilapidated bar. Right now, this is my favorite of the B-MOVI trilogy of Coen and Cooke, and unless they do something like “Lesbians in space” then, I do not see it falling into my ranking.

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/ Film assessment: 7.5 out of 10

“Darling is not!” Open in theaters on August 22, 2025.