When I was younger, there was a dog in our neighborhood that was a shade of mottled brown and black. He was stumpy, hairless, and had a squashed in face, and we called him Ugly Dog. Sometimes Ugly Dog’s owners would walk past our house and we would say appreciatively, “There’s Ugly Dog.” We loved him for his pure ugliness, and in his purity, he was beautiful. He could have been the ugliest dog in the world, and we would have only loved him more. He wore his ugliness like a crown and seemed closer to freedom than any of us.
This is exactly how I feel about Trash Humpers. Harmony Korine’s latest feature film is about grotesque old people who love trash and ugliness so much that it’s sexual. Described as a found VHS tape of a group of sociopaths, it was shot on a camcorder and has the grain and static of a home video. PLAY flashes in the top left corner of a blue screen just before an old man appears crouching in front of a garage in direct sunlight. A man and a woman hump trashcans behind a house with arms limp, faces blank and without speaking. They’re dressed in baggy, pastel slacks with shallow, dead eyes. They perform oral sex on trees, leaves, branches. Birds chirp. The sun still shines. I’m in it for the long haul, but I decide to count the number of people who walk out and it’s already up to three.
Trash Humpers, directed by Harmony Korine
Filed under: Movies, Harmony Korine, Sydney Slotkin, Trash Humpers
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