Drive-Away Dolls is directed by Ethan Coen, who co-wrote the film with his partner and the film’s editor, Tricia Cooke, and stars Margaret Qualley and Geraldine Viswanathan as two lesbian friends on a road trip who unwittingly get caught up in some mobster deal. It’s a love letter to vintage sexploitation films like Russ Meyer’s Motorpsycho and Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, Doris Wishman’s Bad Girls Go to Hell, and Robert Aldrich’s Kiss Me Deadly, while also inspired by directors John Waters and Pedro Almodóvar.
However, underneath it all lies a girls’ road trip movie which is empowering, enlightening, a little dangerous, and of course, a little fun.
The Road Map
The girls' road trip movie (GRTM) is about women who just ~need to get away~ from the monotony of their everyday lives. Abandoning their at-home responsibilities for even a weekend, everything is about being present in the moment with each other, the car, and the road. They meet colorful characters within the Americana melting pot and rebel against the patriarchy through their renewed sense of freedom that comes with connecting to the nature of sisterhood. There might even be car singalongs, a get-rich-quick scheme, and a little bit of crime! (Your mileage may vary.)
Compared to other forms of travel, a girls’ road trip movie is a pressure cooker. The car is an unsung and unofficial character and the almost always present race against some clock is the antagonist. Compared to planes, trains, and charter buses, a car is usually the most accessible and convenient (also the slowest) way to travel, especially if you’re a teenager – as we see in many modern versions of this genre. If you have a license, a dream, and the will to drive for hours on end in a metal box while at the mercy of the elements, the world is yours! Trapped in a car together, you become the captain and the crewmembers, you spend every moment together, share lodging and secrets, and are essentially each other’s lifelines out in the expanse of lands with spotty Wi-Fi and sketchy characters.
Drive-Away Dolls is a lesbian spin on this genre, yet it drives down the same road as many previous girls’ road trip players have – one that ultimately transforms its travelers. The boisterous Jamie (Qualley) is caught cheating and is kicked out of her shared apartment, so she joins the buttoned-up and touch-starved Marian (Viswanathan) on a trip down to Tallahassee. In the titular drive-away Dodge Aries, they head out with a destination, some unplanned detours, dildos, and multiple dalliances ahead of them.
There are a few different dynamics that can come into play in girls' road trip movies: adult best friends (Thelma & Louise, The Sweetest Thing, Joy Ride) or former childhood friends (Unpregnant, Crossroads). Sometimes they’re coworkers or acquaintances (Zola, Death Proof). And while the odd-couple pairing is not required, it’s always more entertaining to have opposing personalities. Women are socialized at a young age to present and act in certain ways that serve the patriarchy and fit within a structure that keeps women in restrictive roles but are at odds with the carefree and curious childlike ways we first experience the world and each other. Remove the constraints of society and we revert to our natures to commune with each other. Consider it the inverse of Lord of the Flies. Women thrive outside of the restrictions of a society constructed by and for men. Take men out of the society that was built for them and they devolve into chaos.
Not-So-United States
Most GRTMs, however, tend to exaggerate the “othering” feeling of visiting a new place with fundamentally different perspectives or customs. It’s a shorthand for how far they’ve traveled, and as always, it’s never a road trip movie without meeting some colorful characters! Sexy strangers, pervy truck drivers, unfazed diner waitresses, unaccommodating motel clerks, and wary gas station attendants all tinge our travelers’ journey with some interesting color. Ideologically different humans show how the United States is not so united in some of its views, forcing women to contextualize their existence in different parts of the country. Unpregnant had fundamental Christians trying to sabotage the girls' trip to the abortion appointment, while a libertarian prepper suited up and drove them there! Balance?
So yes, solo road trips are a thing, but sociologically it’s always better and safer when girls go at it together, like going to the restroom! Move in packs. I’m very serious in claiming Mad Max: Fury Road as a GRTM for the example of the dangers to women on the road, effectively leaving them exposed to their natural predators – men.
What’s a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This?
Often, our heroines end up running away from society and its constructs, roles, and expectations, whichever form that may take. In Thelma & Louise, Thelma’s first act of rebellion is forsaking her shitty husband and running off to a fun girls’ weekend. And while she has a flirty dance with a bar hound, it’s the pervasive rape culture and the realization that the court of public opinion will never take their side that drives Thelma and Louise off a cliff. In Death Proof, Stuntman Mike (Kurt Russell) gets his kicks off stalking women, taunting them, and running them off the road. He insinuates violence unless he gets the lap dance Julia (Sydney Poitier) promised Arlene (Vanessa Ferlito) would do. The women Stuntman Mike runs into a year later happen to also have stunt women who fight back with a muscle car of their own and kick the shit out of him at the end. In Zola, X (Colman Domingo) is a threatening pimp who uses Stefani (Riley Keough) in an attempt to trap Taylour Paige’s title character into prostitution. Still, the two women form a tenuous partnership to make it through the all-night ordeal. The analogy of restricting and oppressive culture patriarchy is taken to its logical conclusion in Mad Max: Fury Road – women are seen as property and used as breeders and milk harvesters. So for these women, taking to the road is the way to go.
The rapidly expanding collection of road trip movies has also lately become a vehicle (pun intended) for stories of strapped young women with unplanned pregnancies (Unpregnant, Never Rarely Sometimes Always, Grandma, Crossroads). Young women on the precipice of adulthood are making a huge personal decision that will change their young lives. In Unpregnant, Veronica (Haley Lu Richardson) is ostensibly trapped by her ignorant, self-serving boyfriend who wants to keep her from going off to college. Taryn Manning’s Mimi in Crossroads is pursuing her pop singer dreams while pregnant and decides that she’s giving her baby conceived from rape up for adoption.
On the flip side, however, the road trip encourages a type of sexual freedom; bless these horny tumbleweeds blowing through small towns. Thelma is so satisfied by peak Brad Pitt that she doesn’t realize that he’s robbing them. The women in Joy Ride engage in truly raunchy activities with a basketball team that benched a few of them. Back to Drive-Away Dolls, Jamie and Marian join a basement makeout party. Britney Spears’ entire arc of losing her virginity in Crossroads is iconically captured by “I’m Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman”! On the road, these women belong to no one but themselves and it’s so freeing!
To quote Ralph Waldo Emerson, “It’s not the destination, it’s the journey.” Sometimes the destination is only the beginning of the real adventure, where hardships can arise and force these women to scramble. In that process, they learn more about themselves and the world around them while also deepening their friendships. Long live the girls’ road trip movie: the great celebration of the resiliency of being a woman breaking free from a patriarchal society… and a reminder that we can always take a little break now and then to be present with ourselves and our surroundings. In the words of Jack Kerouac, “Nothing behind me, everything ahead of me, as is ever on the road.”
