on 5/24/2025, 8:43 pm
It's fascinating--and somewhat harrowing--when a highly-heralded duo splits up: we often see why their creative symbiosis created a whole greater than the sum of its parts.
In the world of classic French film/French noir, we have an iconic example in the duo of Jacques Prevert and Marcel Carné.
In America, we have (for better or worse) the Coen Brothers.
What's clear from the breakup of the Brothers is where the gravitas and the semi-adolescent humor was distributed--Joel is the brooding one who set the boundaries for the craziness; Ethan was the flippant one who, left unchecked, would take the lofty superstructure and collapse it on itself with "timeless" bad taste.
Ethan unbound brought us DRIVE-AWAY DOLLS, a frenetic lesbian road comedy that really got ripped apart by the critics last year. Undaunted, he's back this year with "part two" of what he touts as "a lesbian road trilogy" (albeit without continuing characters), the moodier, more "noir" HONEY DON'T!--which Slash reviewer Bill Bria is (as you'll see, should you click the link above) clearly in love with.
https://gazettely.com/2025/05/entertainment/honey-dont-review/
Similarly, Scott Clark's take on the film reads a good bit like AI-"enhanced" ad copy. (We'll await further reviews that trickle in from Cannes...)
The film is scheduled for a late August theatrical release.
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