ELFF Redux

I Love Trash (Brown, 2008)
I had intended to see this one at the film festival, but decided that I’d avoided work quite enough for one weekend, so I bought the DVD (which cost the same as what my roommate and I would have paid for tickets) instead. I’m still not sure what to make of it. The filmmakers—-David Brown and Greg Mann—-embark on a three-month experiment in which they attempt to live solely off of what they find dumpster diving. They move into an empty apartment with nothing but the clothes on their backs and their camera, and the space is soon filled with furniture, clothes, food, and luxuries all collected from various dumpsters. Their efforts to convince me that my fear of germs and diseases are nothing but bourgeois illusions would have gone over much better had David and Greg been a bit more likable. I realize that’s a terrible thing to say and shouldn’t be the basis of how I judge the film itself, but I found them irritating for much of the film. I wanted to hear about the practical aspects of dumpster diving (Did they talk to store owners to find out when they dump their unsellable food? What criteria did they use to determine what they’d take and what might not be safe?), and I wanted to see more of what they’d done with it (Greg was so excited to find paint that I wanted to know what he painted!). Alas, much of their footage consisted of repetitive shots of them taking food out of the dumpster or lying on the floor of the apartment. This repetition made a fairly short film feel like it dragged on far too long, despite its interesting premise.

Rating: 2.5/5