With the Berlinale film festival drawing to a close and a certain movie star fatigue setting in, there’s always Harmony Korine to turn to. Fortunately, his latest firework of fuck-all attitude, irreverent love for America’s outcasts and oddball sense of humour – aptly titled Trash Humpers – is touring German arthouse cinemas now. According to Korine, Trash Humpers is as usual an ode to the weird and dark side of America: ‘I remember when I was a child there was a small group of elderly people who would hang out in the back alleys and under bridges by my house. They always seemed to be getting drunk and dancing. One night I looked out my bedroom window and saw a group of them humping trash cans and laughing. It sounded like they were speaking a strange invented language. This is a movie about them.’
Korine being Korine, this translates into a film of some sort about, well, four peeping toms – actually Korine, his wife and two friends wearing weird rubber masks – hanging out and doing all kinds of unappetizing stuff – humping trash, for instance, to name one of the more harmless. Filmed in the poorest VHS available, it’s incredibly crude, shamelessly trashy and shockingly funny, all at the same time. Is it a film? Is it art? Well, it’s Harmony Korine. And whatever you think of him, he’s still one of the most carelessly original minds in what has remained of American independent cinema.
And thus, for cheap thrills and unsettling entertainment, look out for Trash Humpers coming to a cinema near you.
