Quinoa1984

Honey Don't! Has as its main feature the quality of seeming to be tossed off by the director and writers/producers Ethan Coen and Tricia Cooke, as I am sure the latter and certainly the former has inhaled enough detective novels and movies and other forms of seedy pulp fiction to over-fill a small but sturdy bookstore and know the types and tropes in their bones.

If it feels so loose even under 90 minutes that it even could feel like Coen and Cooke wrote this in a few heated days in a trailer in Bakersfield (or at least with some postcards from the city over their walls), that is a feature and not a bug; there is a sneaky confidence to the filmmaking as Coen is at the point after making films for so long that the "plot" doesn't matter so much as giving the actors some strange dialog to make as real as they can (and thus funnier). This and Drive-Away Dolls and, if it happens, the third movie in this unofficial Shaggy Lesbian-and-Liquor-and-Cigarette Soaked Neo-Noir trilogy are "B" level in what is on the page, and if it feels minor it is mostly because of the insanely high quality of work that Coen has in his Hard-Left-Turn Crime movies (and Cooke as well as co-editor on several films by the brothers).

Thankfully, the filmmakers know how sharp Qualley looks in those heels and suits and understand what power she has as a beauty on screen but more importantly how adept she is at the Coen style of snappy patter that often moves into more serious connotations in the next scene or within the scene (the moment when her father comes a knocking straddles the line between funny and sad and is a perfect example of the amusing melancholy that laces many parts of the second half of this at least).

There are also plum parts for a crude Chris Evans, nearly half of his performance half naked - he seems the most to me, for better or worse, like a character that could easily be in a Coen homage or even rip off (tell me he is not a spot on recurring character for the Fargo TV show) - and Aubrey Plaza, who gets to have such a wild monologue late in the film that it makes the turn into this moment justified (though barely, I'm still not sure how I feel about that without giving too much except that it does give a beat for a kind of critique of internalized misogyny maybe the film needed more time to unpack).

Meanwhile, there is some terrific sensuality as well as absurd moments with that (easy pickings for comedy, sure, but still funny), and some horrific violence that shows that this late-era filmmaker can find new ways to make an audience curdle a bit from common household items in panic mode. I also liked the ways that just by flipping gender a bit we see certain tropes in a familiar but skewed light like with Billy Eighner's few scenes (the kind of actor who makes a full meal out of a school lunch worth of characterization). Again, I can't go to bat for this as something greater than what it is, and yet I think it is only trying to be as clever as it is and not much more. Honey Don't is a highly entertaining lark, no more or less.

I would be lying if I said every bit of the storytelling was easy to follow in the first half - or that isn't quite right, more than the pacing is so break-neck you feel like Tsui Hark is a little worried the audience might lose what's happening if he isn't throwing some bit of broad comic or dramatic business - but what he is truly gifted at here, which is staging equally intense comedy and acting and just giving all the room for his totally charismatic and electric and even kind of adorable cast of women and (some) men playing out roles upon roles, makes up the difference for a pretty spectacular thrill ride.

Brigitte Lin is the more grounded dramaric foundation here (quite the departure for me from the Wong Kar Wai I've seen her in previously), but the unabashed joy is seeing Yeh and Chung play off of Lin as an unlikely trio (come to think of it put this on a double with the Heroic Trio and you got... six great performances!) This is a movie that has a terrific backdrop of the Chinese theater of the turn of the 20th century and that is captivating enough, but what keeps one hooked in is the subterfuge and everything the ladies have to do to get this or that item (key, Secret President Papers above all), and that when the action and fights and guns kick in... whoa, baby.

As a story of espionage maybe Hark knows he has to rely on his cast and stunt team to kick it into over-drive, but he understands that this movie is about the kind of Big Dance that someone has to do on a stage, in playing a man or what it even means for a woman to play a woman (where is the spark in that... until it is amazing) that will keep us glued and laughing at how Big it gets.

There is tonal whiplash sometimes, to be sure - we go from a rather harrowing and upsetting torture sequence to a flamboyant seduction to a "this character is totally alive even though they are totally dead" gag - and yet I was into those parts the most, when Hark just gives in to how behind the giant mustaches and wigs these men are total.... dopes and have little chance against our beleaguered heroes.

In short, it takes a few minutes to fully lock in, not to mention sort of let go how we shouldn't care about the possible romantic tension between spies, and once we do we can wholly soak up the balls to the wall action and comedy and (at points) blood-soaked melodrama. This is one of those pulpy delights that shows a director in love with the ways he can throw bodies through the air in visceral displays of bravado and how funny it is seeing someone rearrange a blanket to disguise unwanted guests.

(I should note the version I saw, which is screening with 4K screenings of the full In the Mood for Love feature, runs 9 minutes nit 32 as listed here)

On one hand, I am always glad to see something by Wong Kar Wai that has eluded me (or just been unavailable outside of digging through torrent sites online or for a poor copy on youtube), and this is fascinating in the ways that WKW lets his performers have a freedom to play in what are otherwise carefully composed and timed compositions (even, probably especially when, they seem to be freewheeling and hand held shots). On the other hand, the title of this could be misleading for some who have little idea what this actually is.

From what little I've read, this was meant to be its own part of a trilogy of films about... food (the actual feature of In the Mood for Love just got to be so long as its own thing). That makes more sense as this is much closer to the rougher street-level kind of stylized naturalism that Wong had with his mid 1990s films like Chungking Express or Fallen Angels, up to and including a washed out color palette. If not for the now immortal musical cue by Shigeru Umebayashi being featured briefly, it would have little outside of the two leads to connect it to the feature, albeit there is a poetic streak that runs through the narration that speaks to something of longing for Leung to Cheung here... just not that subdued kind you may be expecting.

I still enjoyed this a lot for what it is which is a scenario surrounding a botched shoplifting, a punch in the nose and a lot of iced cakes being gorged by the two leads, and it does get in and out quick enough that the shallow pleasures that abound are enough for it to get by. It is an extended sketch more than something that requires a fleshed out narrative, but the actors are present and their chemistry as before is electric so that helps. A lot.