Honey Don’t, directed by Ethan Coen and co-written by his wife Tricia Cooke, is currently streaming on Netflix. This is the second movie in what Coen and Cooke coin “lesbian B-movie trilogy” through there have been no talks of a third movie after Honey Don’t and Drive Away Dolls.
Considering the IMDB score (5.6/10) and the fact that it has a 45% from critics and 39% from audiences according to Rotten Tomatoes, the only good thing about this movie is the relationship within it.
Margaret Qualley plays private detective Honey O’ Donahue, taking on the case of a murder involving a religious cult. Her co-star, Aubrey Plaza, is MG Falcone, a police officer who helps Honey and is very attracted with her, so much so the law won’t stand in her way.
OK, so the thing that has caused much discussion is that midway through the movie sees MG and Honey talking about the case at a bar during the day. Honey shoots her shot and pulls MG’s hand to her lap. Her lap is out of frame, but this leads to MG fingering Honey. Note they are in public, sitting in bar stools where anyone can see. They maintain their conversation getting to know each other until Honey tells the bartender they are not getting another round of drinks and leaving. This led to MG putting her fingers back in frame and putting them in her mouth. Hot? Yes. Realistic that they didn’t get kicked out of the bar? No.
The next scenes are the two having sex at Honey’s place, having sex that involved choking, handcuffs, and more, which seemed explicit for a PG-13 movie.
The lesbian representation will always be appreciated in media, but there are better ways to do that. They could have given this movie an R rating and kept the goal of hot sex. Or, keeping the PG-13 rating could have meant we had a story involving the growth of their relationship by building connection first and then attraction. Either solution could have fixed the problems.
Photo courtesy of social media
