This Review Reveals Minor Details About the Plot.
Female Private Dick
Plot Overview
Honey O'Donahue (Margaret Qualley)
and her sister Heidi (Kristen Connolly) were deserted by their dad
when they were young. Heidi is now a single mom with a growing
brood of children spaced out in age while Honey is a career private
eye who engages regularly in casual, lesbian sex. Her California
practice thrives as she specializes in homos getting the goods on
their unfaithful partners; having two breadwinners with no
children they can afford her $100/hr.
fee. She has her own receptionist Spider (Gabby Beans) but eschews
computers, relying instead on a personalized haphazard filing
system. She pounds the pavement as a gumshoe in high heels and
leaves her cell phone turned off pretending she hasn't got one.
Police homicide detective
Marty Metakawich (Charlie Day) investigating a suspicious
auto accident in Antelope Canyon questions her about her deceased
client Mia Novotny (Kara Petersen) who had her card, but she hadn't
yet been retained. Having nothing else on her plate, Honey tries to
find out what Mia wanted her for. Then she gets a paying client
Mr. Siegfried (Billy Eichner) who wants the particulars
on his cheating partner Mr. Colligan (Christian
Antidormi.) About this time her rebellious niece Corrine
(Talia Ryder) disappears, and Honey unable to find her turns her
attention to the cult-like Four-Way Temple Church that welcomes
strangers in need of succor. Unbeknownst to her the church's
minister is a go-between for French, drug dealer Chère (Lera
Abova) who was involved in the fatal "accident." These players are
confederate, but can Honey connect the dots?
Ideology
So we have an oxymoron of a lesbo dick, in a film dictated by a Coen renowned for the offbeat, yet bringing his eccentric characters straight down the middle of the road. Webster defines “temperance n 1: moderation in action, thought, or feeling: RESTRAINT.” As a Christian ethic it's expressed as being (1Cor. 9:24-25) “Know ye not that they which run in a race run all, but one receiveth the prize? So run, that ye may obtain. And every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a corruptible crown; but we an incorruptible.” The spiritual application follows the carnal one.
This is not a faith-based
movie, but its portrayals of temperance can be adapted.
“Moderation in action” occurs when church acolyte/drug
dealer Hector (Jacnier Rios) does the “woman's work” of
bringing in his grandmother's laundry from the line while she
continues her work that is never done. It's also portrayed by
office worker Spider who complains throughout that she is not
given enough to do, things like answering the phone or making a cup
of joe. It's also shown by an old man nursing a cup of coffee at
a diner for two hours. “Moderation in thought” is
portrayed at the “accident” scene when Det. Metakawich asks Honey if
she thinks the corpse is in fact dead—it's deader than a
doornail—and she reserves judgment until the medical
examiner arrives. “Moderation in feeling” is portrayed
when Honey rejects Metakawich's pass telling him, “I
like girls,” but she told her bed partner in the opening
scene, “The door locks behind you.” She likes girls but
not enough to keep them around.
There's another instance
of temperance when Honey declares it a matter of pride that she
drinks but says Tuesday is her dry day. The KJV of 1611 enjoined
temperance in, Acts 24:24-25, 1Cor. 9:25, Gal.
5:23, Titus 1:7-8, Titus 2:2, and 2Peter 1:5-6. When the KJV was (needlessly
in my opinion) updated by the ASV in 1900, temperance
was left in. Nevertheless, it has been reinterpreted
by many modern Bible translators as self-control so as
not to confuse the common man who since Prohibition in the 1920s
regards temperance as applicable only to drink. My Concise
Thesaurus has “sober adj. temperate. A person
who is sober is not
drunk. A temperate
person exercises moderation and self-restraint and for that reason
is unlikely to drink to excess” (170.) Modern Protestant
Bibles such as RSV (1952), and later NKJV, ESV & NIV now read
“self-control” where they used to read
“temperance.” Yet California Gov. Gavin Newsom in a March, 2024
interview extolled President Biden, saying: “We have American
manufacturing coming back home, all because of Biden's wisdom,
because of his temperance, his capacity to lead in a bipartisan
manner—” Bipartisan leadership is by nature
temperate. The Jubilee 2000 Bible still uses
temperance. It's valid for more than drink.
In Mia's eulogy the minister read Psalm 23 from either the ESV or
the NIV—I can't tell from my scrawled notes—so
“self-control” will have been substituted in the verses
above. According to Porter G. Perrin, Index to
English: The Meaning of Words 3b. Synonyms. A
synonym is a word of nearly the same meaning as another.
… There are very few pairs of interchangeable
words
(192). And according to Fowler, “Synonyms,
in the narrowest sense, are separate words whose meaning, both
denotation & connotation, is so fully identical that one can
always be substituted for the other without change in the
effect of the sentence in which it is done. Whether any such
perfect synonyms exist is doubtful.” According to Professor
George P. Marsh in an 1859 postgraduate lecture on the English
Bible of 1611: “Words and ideas are so inseparably connected,
they become in a sense connatural, that we cannot change the
one without modifying the other. … A new translation of the
Bible, therefore, or an essential modification of the existing
[KJV] version, is substantially a new book, a new Bible, another
revelation” (454). In this movie self-control is
manifested by sex workers following the punctilious instructions of
Reverend Drew Devlin (Chris Evans) as he's humping them while
shooting porn tapes.
The apostle Paul enjoins (1Tim. 2:9) “that women adorn
themselves in modest apparel, with shamefacedness
and sobriety.” “Shamefacedness” has to
do with being easily embarrassed. The relevant note in my Franklin
Electronic Bible reads, “Early printer's error for
‘shamefastness’, which means modesty of
character.” The New Cambridge Paragraph Bible
restores the original ‘shamefastness’, and
the ASV retains it, too. The ESV substitutes “respectable
apparel, with modesty and self-control.” This movie contains
an example of each, along the lines of a Peter Mountford
novel: “At dinner she wore a long-sleeved top, in order to
hide her tattoos” (102). Under Mia's bed Honey discovers a
modest chemise hiding in its folds a leather harness, sex rig that
commands respect for the wearer who's in control, and compared to
the altogether in other scenes is modest. When Honey visits the
humble digs of female police officer MG Falcone (Aubrey Plaza,) her
uniform bunched on the floor is revealed to conceal a holster sans
service revolver. The broad had that rare “modesty of
character” to bring a knife to a gun fight.
Production Values
“” (2025) was written and directed by Ethan Coen, co-scripted with his wife Tricia Cooke. It stars Margaret Qualley, Aubrey Plaza, Charlie Day, Lera Abova, Gabby Beans, Talia Ryder, and Kristen Connolly. The acting was superb. Margaret Qualley playing skinny Honey is deadpan to a fault.
MPA rated it R for strong sexual content, graphic nudity, some strong violence, and language. The corpse shot was way too much information. It's a send-up of a 1940s detective novel/movie, set in 2024 Bakersfield and environs. It lives up to past Coen standards. Runtime is 1½ hours.
Review Conclusion w/a Christian's Recommendation
The compromised church leader shamelessly capitalizes on Aimee Semple McPherson (1890–1944,) media darling and founder of the Foursquare Church. She was subject to intense media scrutiny over a one month hiatus in which she claimed she'd been kidnapped by Mexicans but was more likely holed up in a motel room with a congregant. She did, however, publicly repent, sincerely if obliquely.
I love all the Coen stuff, this one included, but it might not be everyone's cup of tea.
Movie Ratings
Action factor: Edge of your seat action scenes. Suitability For Children: Not Suitable for Children of Any Age. Special effects: Well done special effects. Video Occasion: Fit For a Friday Evening. Suspense: Keeps you on the edge of your seat. Overall movie rating: Five stars out of five.
Works Cited
Unless otherwise indicated, scripture quotations are taken from the Authorized King James Version (KJV.) Pub. 1611. Rev. 1769, 1873. Software, print.
Biden, Joe. Quoted from Jack Birle's article, “Gavin Newsom calls Biden's age a ‘gift’ rather than a liability.” In The Washington Examiner. Web.
The Holy Bible, English Standard Version (ESV). Copyright © 2001 by Crossways Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Print, WEB.
Fowler, H.W., A Dictionary of Modern English Usage. USA: Oxford UP. 1946. Print.
Franklin note is from “The Bible Word Book,” R. Bridges and L. Weigle, Thomas Nelson 1960.
Marsh, George P.
“Disturbance of Formulas.”
Lectures on the English
Language. London: John Murray, 1863. Print.
——available to
read or download at www.bibles.n7nz.org.
Mountford, Peter. The Dismal Science. Copyright © 2014 by Peter Mountford. Portland, Oregon and Brooklyn, New York: Tin House Books, First U.S. edition 2014. Print.
Perrin, Porter G. Index to English. Chicago: Scott, Foresman & Co., 1939. Print.
The Right Word II. A Concise Thesaurus. Based on the New American Heritage Dictionary. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1983. Print.
Webster's Ninth New College Dictionary. Springfield, Massachusetts, Merriam-Webster, 1983. Print.
bibles.n7nz.org