Black heels on a tile floor, and a seamed stocking leading up to a pencil skirt and a simple white blouse. In a Classical Hollywood noir film, that look would belong to the femme fatale, the transgressive woman whose function is to lead the traditional, red-blooded American hero astray. In this case, though, the look belongs to Honey ODonahue, a femme for sure, but in Tricia Cooke and Ethan Coens dark comedy Honey Dont, shes not sent to steer men wrong. A private detective and the hero of her story as she solves a murder case, Honey, as embodied by The Substance star Margaret Qualley, is Bogart and Bacall in one. And Aubrey Plazas uniformed cop, MG Falcone, can't help but notice.Honey, right? Love those click-clacking heels, MG tells Honey as the detective sidles away with a knowing grin. Their chemistry is palpable, and soon these sapphics engage in a public sex act that is a test, an affirmation of their mutual desire, and a bit of movie-making magic. Honey Dont is a rare queer genre flick courtesy of Cooke and Coen, the married duo behind Drive-Away Dolls, which starred Qualley as a lesbian tomboy on a road trip with her best friend.They're super different. They both like girls. That is important, Qualley tells Out about playing queer characters Honey and Jamie in Drive-Away Dolls. They both are used to being in the power seat. I think they both are leaders and pretty fearless. So much freedom in both in different ways.Jamie, specifically, I played that character right after I played Sue in The Substance, she adds of the Oscar-nominated film in which she played a maniacal, physically perfect version of Demi Moores character. It was such a relief, honestly, to cut my hair off and put on jeans pretty much polar opposites in physicality. Margaret Qualley as Honey O'Donahue in Honey Don'tCourtesy Focus Features True to fashion in Coens films with his brother Joel (Blood Simple, Fargo, No Country For Old Men), Honey Dont delivers comical gore, bumbling criminals, and a dipshit deviant pastor in the form of Chris Evans.The film is the second after Drive-Away Dolls in a trilogy of sapphic stories from queer writer Cooke and Coen. Honey Dont, with its neon signs and low camera angles, takes the tropes of classic noir like The Big Sleep and Double Indemnity and flips them by gender-swapping the hero and centering queer sex between Honey and MG.Theres a scene at a bar where Honey and the more traditionally butch-leaning MG trade information and sexual innuendo until MG slides her hand between Honeys skirt to test the waters, as it were. The steamy finished scene is likely to become a talker, especially with Qualley and Plazas mutual sapphic appeal. Qualley shares insight into how the MG/Plazas hand emerges glistening from the folds of Honeys skirt. Honey Don't filmmakers Tricia Cooke and Ethan Coen with star Margaret Qualley (center)It was fun. There's someone from the props department on their knees holding a jar of coconut oil. Aubrey's got to lift her finger up and have it be wet, Qualley shares. It was just playing with different levels of how far you get in that setting and trying to work out the physicality there to make sure that I was saying what we were trying to say, but it was really funny and really fun.As for working with Plaza, who is bisexual and made a splash in the queer Agatha All Along last year, Qualley says, I don't know anyone that doesn't just love her, and I've loved her from afar for such a long time. Getting to work with her was such a dream. Margaret Qualley as Honey O'Donahue in Honey Don't Courtesy Focus Features A classically trained dancer and an integral part of projects including Fosse/Verdon, the queer-leaning Novitiate, and Yorgos Lanthimoss Poor Things and Kinds of Kindness, Qualley prepped for Honey Dont by watching Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall flicks, including the Bogart vehicle The Maltese Falcon, and Robert Altmans 1973 neo-noir, The Long Goodbye. By the time she stepped into Honeys heels to face off with Evanss corrupt pastor, who dabbles in kink-fueled three-ways, drugs, and murder, Qualley had studied the role of the femme in those films to make the character her own.Honey, I feel like she's really doing it for herself [not for anyones gaze]. I think the way that honey dresses, for example, I feel like it's reflective of her. I know this sounds strange, but her dedication to her craft in a sense, Qualley says. There's something so sexy about being good at what you do, no matter what it is. Her relationship to being a detective means that she wants to feel sharp in the way that she's dressed and the way her hair looks and her red lipstick. I think it's like a mastery of the art of being a detective in a sense.Honey marks Qualleys second lesbian role for Cooke and Coen in a film thats by and large, very queer, and just a load of fun. The value in playing a queer role in a comedy is not lost on Qualley.I'm so grateful to be a part of this movie and to be able to play a character like this. I love Honey. I love that I got to play her. It's just fucking cool, Qualley says. But I also love the opportunity to do something so unserious, and I think there's a certain amount of serious movies that need to happen about a subject before you can make something unserious.Honey Don't is in theaters now.