By John Corrado
Caleb Hearon gets a starring role in director Kris Rey’s Trash Mountain, a heartfelt and funny indie dramedy that has some familiar beats but presents them in a mostly satisfying way.
Hearon stars in the film as Gavin, a gay man living in Chicago, where he has found his people as the emcee of a drag show. Then he gets a call from his sister Abbi (Zooey Deschanel), informing him that their father has died, sending him back to rural Missouri for the funeral. The grief the siblings feel is complicated by the strained relationship they had with their father, a hoarder and alcoholic who shut himself off from the world.
Gavin and Abbi are now left sorting through the literal mountains of trash and junk he left behind in his house. There is a looming deadline, with them needing to find his social security card amidst the rubble of his life. They are also balancing the demands of Grandma Helen (Jackie Weaver), who is desperate to give her son a religious funeral that Gavin and Abbi know their dad wouldn’t have wanted.
Hearon, a standup comic usually in supporting roles, does a fine job graduating to lead this time around as a gay man whose defence mechanism is to be jaded and cynical. Deschanel provides nice supporting work. She subtly and warmly delivering the film’s strongest dramatic arc, as Abbi has to balance her excitement over having her brother back, with recognizing his desire to get out of there as quickly as possible. It’s a nice reminder of how much we have missed having her onscreen.
Gavin’s constant cynicism around religion and the Kansas City locals can feel like a bit too much, and he is called out on it by Weaver’s character in one moment that resonates when the siblings take it a little too far. The cast is rounded out by Kyle Marvin as Abbi’s attentive husband, and Jaboukie Young-White as a local Grindr hookup turned emotional support presence for Gavin.
If Trash Mountain doesn’t escape some of the expected indie movie beats, it also subverts them in a few ways. The film thankfully avoids the pitfall of having Gavin’s sexuality be the thing that led to a strained relationship with his dad, who we are told was always very accepting of his son in whatever capacity he could be. This is refreshingly not a “coming out” story, or one where Gavin is not accepted by his family for being gay. It’s a refreshing change of pace.
The hoarding themes also add a fresh quality to it. The screenplay, co-written by Hearon and Ruby Castor, sensitively handles the elephant in the room at the centre of it, which is the father’s hoarding and alcohol addiction, addressing it as a mental health challenge beyond his control. They are able to turn the dad, who is never seen onscreen, into a mostly developed character through how others talk about him. The film finds humour in the situations, but is pretty touching by the end.
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