Lesbian Neo Noir Honey Don’t! Burns with Sun-Drenched Intensity
Ethan Coen and Tricia Cooke, the team behind Drive-Away Dolls, return with their second Lesbian black comedy starring Margaret Qualley in as many years, Honey Don’t! — a James M. Cain meets Dashiell Hammett neo noir (with a healthy dash of Lana and Lilly Wachowski’s Bound) that belligerently refuses to follow narrative convention. It’s like The Big Sleep crossed with No Country for Old Men, only from a confidently Sapphic point of view and with a bleak, nihilistic mean streak.
This seems like the type of structurally dense private-detective fiction that will mystify viewers during its initial release and then age incredibly well over time. Think Arthur Penn’s Night Moves or Michael Mann’s Manhunter. The conversations are brief, pungent, and achingly genuine. Individual moments come at you like idiosyncratic sojourns into the surreal, only to grow in magnitude when the completed puzzle is revealed. It’s sleazy and virtuous at the same time, and — while I hope this won’t be the case — I suspect I’ll be in the minority in finding this latest blood-soaked confection to be delicious.
California small-town private investigator Honey O’Donahue (Qualley) is frustrated. A young woman who recently contacted her, worrying that she could be in danger, has turned up dead in a freakish automobile accident. While it doesn’t look like there was any foul play, the PI remains perplexed. What was it this lady wanted? What made her so afraid? Having no idea if she will uncover any wrongdoing, Honey is compelled to investigate anyhow.
While there’s nothing strange about any of that, it’s where Coen and Cooke take things that is so compelling. Honey’s sister Heidi (Kristen Connolly) is mom to several children, the eldest of whom, Corinne (Talia Ryder), is in an abusive relationship. A local pastor, the charming Reverend Drew Devlin (Chris Evans), is more cult leader than bona fide man of the cloth. His church also doubles as a front for a French narcotics ring, and their local representative (Lera Abova) isn’t fond of Devlin’s decision-making skills. On top of all of this, Honey is having what was intended to be a one-night stand with policewoman MG Falcone (Aubrey Plaza). But their sexual escapades transpire over multiple nights, so maybe their relationship will last longer than anticipated.
All the subplots connect, but rarely in a predictable way. Loose ends aren’t accidental but by design. Honey’s investigation may lead to some semblance of the truth, but not the entirety, and I love that about the film. This is a character study of a woman with agency and determination who does what she thinks is right, damn the consequences. She knows she’s flawed and has issues. She also understands that’s exactly what makes her human. Honey is her own woman, and that’s why she’s unforgettable.
The lackadaisical pacing is an issue. This thriller runs less than 90 minutes, but it feels longer, especially during the early portions of the third act. The sudden shifts in tone, while a Coen trademark (think Fargo or Burn After Reading), can also be jarring. It’s admittedly hard not to wonder how much more seamless those crazily violent transitions from comedy to drama to suspense to tragedy and back to comedy might have been had Ethan’s brother Joel been around to lend some assistance.
Part of me thinks I’m so in the bag for Honey Don’t! primarily due to its visual, structural, and storytelling reverence for classic noirs of the 1940s and ’50s, notably Out of the Past, The Third Man, and Touch of Evil. But there’s so much more to it than that. Coen pays homage to the past but also looks fearlessly into the future. Director of photography Ari Wegner’s camera placements are a thing of unnerving beauty. There’s nothing regurgitative about any of this.
And that’s awesome. Nothing is off limits in Coen and Cooke’s world. There are bursts of hard-hitting honesty that enraptured my soul, like when Honey and MG share a postcoital smoke and word-vomit truisms that a less ambitious picture would have avoided. Sexuality is celebrated, not something to be hidden or ashamed of. Death is random, ugly, and, even when morbidly humorous, deliberately unglamorous. It’s a-okay to mock organized religion, especially when it is perverted, consumerist, and blatantly hypocritical.
For me, it is the ending that vaults this one into the stratosphere. Things work out in the most peculiar way possible, and while I’m obviously not going to reveal why that is, know that it’s priceless. Coen utilizes Qualley’s facial expressions, verbal dexterity, and physical ingenuity to perfection. In doing so, he contextualizes all of these absurdist events with rapturous verisimilitude. Honey Don’t! is a ray of light amid all the sun-drenched, California desert, daytime darkness, and the burn it leaves behind is glorious.
– Review reprinted courtesy of the SGN in Seattle
Film Rating: 3½ (out of 4)
