Trash, review: trash by name, trash by nature

Trash is the sort of film one desperately wishes to be kind about — heart supremely, if not burstingly, in the right place and all that — but it doesn’t make life easy for itself. Directed by Stephen Daldry, with a script by Richard Curtis, and set amid the kids who work the rubbish dumps of Rio de Janeiro, this aspires to combine (I think) the lively spirit and warmth of Slumdog Millionaire with the hard-hitting social agenda of City of God, but in working both angles, it doesn’t pull off either one. It also culminates in the most implausibly happy ‘feelgood’ ending known to man (and here I am being kind, because I could have added ‘or beast’, but did not).

The story, as based on the source novel by Andy Mulligan, follows three boys of 14 or thereabouts who live in a favela and daily scale the rubbish dump, collecting water bottles. They stumble across a wallet which, it transpires, the police are deeply interested in retrieving, and which will ultimately take them into the heart of a conspiracy involving a corrupt politician. The boys are played by real Brazilian street kids (Rickson Tevez, Gabriel Weinstein and Eduardo Luis), who speak only Portuguese (the film is subtitled). It’s not a struggle to be kind about any of these boys who are wonderfully energetic, charismatic and natural. Daldry can certainly coax terrific performances from youngsters, as he did with Jamie Bell in BillyElliot. But while the boys feel authentic, little else does.

Some aspects you are simply expected to buy, like the fact that, poor as they are, they would rather hang on to the wallet than turn it in for the reward, or the fact none of them has any family whatsoever; not a parent, sibling, aunt, uncle, cousin or second cousin once removed between them, and no mention that they might have ever had any.