Margaret Qualley swans by “Honey Don’t!” like a film star who might need been born within the unsuitable period, however she’s going to take advantage of it. Regally tall, in crimson heels and a white-flowered crimson gown, her hair in flowing ringlets, her lips pursed with objective, Qualley performs Honey O’Donoghue, a non-public detective in Bakersfield who has the deep voice and regular gaze of a hard-boiled femme fatale from the Fifties.

Honey, who drives a classic turquoise Chevrolet SS, has to maintain flicking away the propositions of a neighborhood cop (Charlie Day) by telling him, “I like women.” She’s not mendacity, however the truth that he can’t hear it says quite a bit concerning the skewed manner the world nonetheless seems to be at queer ladies. The film, in the meantime, seems to be as much as its heroine in a stylized manner that’s very Tarantino-meets-Jane-Russell. In one other period, Honey would have been handled as an object of adoration, however in “Honey Don’t!” her voice of darkest honey lets you understand that she’s the one in command.

This week at Cannes, the actor Paul Mescal informed Selection, “I believe in cinema we’re transferring away from the normal, alpha main male characters.” I’ve acquired a bit of stories for him: In cinema, it’s alpha — alpha males, and alpha females too — that also makes the world go spherical, and it at all times will. However we’re now in an period when some tastemakers have grown uncomfortable with that. Final yr, quite a few movie critics weren’t proud of how overtly sexual Margaret Qualley’s efficiency in “The Substance” was — they handled it as if that dimension of the movie was by some means linked to a male-gaze conspiracy. However the unapologetic erotic pow of Qualley’s presence is a part of what’s going to make her a really, very huge film star. She’s not retrograde — she’s timeless. She’s additionally a witty and crafty actor who is aware of find out how to bend a scene to her rhythms.

“Honey Don’t” premiered tonight within the Midnight Screenings part of Cannes (I like that Cannes has a Midnight Screenings part — it’s type of like saying “the grindhouse wing of the Criterion Assortment,” which come to think about it’s a good suggestion), and that’s precisely the place the movie belongs. Like final yr’s “Drive-Away Dolls,” to which it’s a companion piece, “Honey Don’t!” is a deliberate throwaway — a knowingly mild and humorous mock escapist thriller, one which’s simply attempting to indicate you a flaky good time.

In “Drive-Away Dolls,” Qualley performed a really totally different character: an erotic libertine named Jamie who talked a mile a minute (her screwball fashion was an analog of her libido — at all times on the transfer), and who acquired drawn right into a caper that was knowingly preposterous (it revolved round a suitcase stuffed with oversize dildos). Honey O’Donoghue is a extra buttoned-down character, and the brand new movie has a distinct tone, much less loony tunes and extra straight-up neo-noir, with a small-town scuzziness that’s established within the opening credit, the place all of the names are niftily embedded within the signage of Bakersfield’s dilapidated shops and eating places.

The film is the second in what its director, Ethan Coen, has now stated can be a trilogy of tales — one thing you wouldn’t precisely have guessed after “Drive-Away Dolls” got here out, since that film acquired no respect and made all of $5 million. But as one of many solely critics who appreciated it, I used to be up for seeing “Honey Don’t!,” and I wasn’t disenchanted. What Ethan Coen and his spouse, Tricia Cooke (they write these movies collectively and he or she edits them), are as much as is enjoyable and “progressive” in simply the proper anti-pious manner. In every movie, the Qualley heroine is casually and unabashedly queer (as is Tricia Cooke), and the hook of the movies — the hook of the whole trilogy, if we are able to now at the least conjecture — is that these are riffs on lesbian expertise that are supposed to be not in the least accountable.

“Honey Don’t!” is ready in a much less specified period than “Drive-Away Dolls,” which came about in 1999. Honey, in her workplace, retains her contacts in a Rolodex and appears very pre-computer, although which may simply be a part of her noir aura. The plot, as soon as once more, targets the hypocrisy of Center America — on this case, the 4 Method Temple, a neighborhood church that opens itself as much as troubled parishioners, all in order that its chief, the Reverend Drew (Chris Evans), is stored provided with a prepared flock of weak younger ladies he can gown up in S&M regalia and mattress down with at will.

Drew, who has televangelist hair and preaches with a head-mic, is a cult chief and felony, concerned in drug dealing and worse. The movie spins across the homicide of considered one of his followers, and the mishaps that escalate out of attempting to cowl it up. That sounds a bit nuts and is, particularly because the film performs it as a dry joke. (It’s good to see Chris Evans take pleasure in himself portraying a bit of trash.) If “Drive-Away Dolls” felt like “Elevating Arizona Lite,” this one is nearer to “Blood Less complicated,” although it’s actually a sleazeball hangout film within the spirit of “The Huge Lebowski” and “Repo Man,” with a wink at Raymond Chandler. In “Honey Don’t!,” the principle objective of the crooks is to maintain us firm.

Honey has household issues, like a troubled sister (Kristen Connolly) and a punk niece (Talia Ryder) with an abusive boyfriend. And an fascinating overlap between Honey and the heroine of “Drive-Away Dolls” is that neither one can appear to take care of a relationship. Honey will get concerned with MG (Aubrey Plaza), a cop who lives in what seems to be on the within like a suburban model of the “Psycho” home, and due to the downbeat grit of Plaza’s efficiency, their affair feels horny and real in all too many imperfect methods.

It’s been seven years because the Coen brothers made a movie collectively, and in that point, throughout which they declared the top of their inventive partnership, the profession of every brother has performed out in a shocking manner. Pretty or not, I at all times considered Joel Coen because the mover and shaker, and Ethan because the little brother tagging alongside. (Joel is now 70; Ethan is 67.) And when Joel directed the primary post-Coen brothers movie, his bedazzling model of “The Tragedy of MacBeth” (2021), that picture remained intact. It didn’t change when Ethan made his sharp YouTube clip job of a Jerry Lee Lewis documentary, “Jerry Lee Lewis: Hassle in Thoughts” (2022), or final yr when he got here out with “Drive-Away Dolls.” However now that Ethan Coen, with Tricia Cooke as his inventive accomplice, has dedicated himself to the minor however partaking imaginative and prescient of those movies, giving Margaret Qualley such a profitable pedestal for her expertise, I’d say it’s he who all of a sudden seems to be just like the mover and shaker. “Honey Don’t!” is ready to open late this summer time. However I’m already avid to see who Qualley’s going to play in chapter three.