After having been lauded with a Palme d’or, three Awards for Best Director, and a Grand Prix with his brother Joel, Ethan Coen is now ready to woo the Festival de Cannes in Official Selection with a Midnight Screening of Honey Don’t! This second solo feature film confirms his desire to investigate new cinematographic horizons.
Since his artistic separation from Joel, Ethan Coen is exploring more personal material, adopting a more experimental style, and breaking with the fundamentals of his fruitful partnership with his brother. This evolution was already noticeable in Drive-Away Dolls (2023), his first solo feature film, co-written with his partner Tricia Cooke. The younger Coen used a more spontaneous narration with rawer dialogues to track the comical and mad odyssey of two lesbian friends on a fraught road trip.
“Tricia has a distinct queer sensibility, far removed from the sophisticated style that Joel and I had developed,” Ethan Coen had posited at the time. “Working with her allowed me to tackle subjects and formats that I had never previously explored. I don’t think Joel and I would have written a romantic comedy with two female leads.” The irreverent spirit brimming with satire and absurdist humor, characterizing the Coen brothers’ films still feeds the filmmaker’s new work. With Honey Don’t!, the second installment in a trilogy celebrating lesbian B-movies, he continues his exploration of queerness.
The plot, conceived by Ethan Coen and Tricia Cooke, takes place in Bakersfield, California. Honey O’Donahue, a private detective played by Margaret Qualley, is mixed up in business involving a charismatic cult guru and an enigmatic woman, with roles for Chris Evans and Aubrey Plaza respectively. Blending an investigation, social and religious satire with a hint of unbridled sensuality results in a delicious new black comedy, to be released in the United States next summer.
