Midge (Blaine Dunham) and Alice (Leslie Nipkow) are on their way to a wedding when Alice loses control of the car. Though neither are hurt in the mishap, they find themselves stuck in a ditch by a creepy landfill in the middle of nowhere. To make matters worse, since the wedding has a medieval theme, they’re both wearing the rather silly looking pointy, cone headed hats and flowing gowns of Middle Age damsels in distress. When Perry (Mark Lane), a hunky local hayseed who bears a striking resemblance to Green Bay Packers quarterback Brett Favre, stumbles across the women and has the audacity to appear attracted to the plain, somewhat simple-minded Alice rather than the cute but bitchy Midge, long-simmering resentments between the two sisters bubble to the surface. Buried under the veneer of adulthood, Alice’s bitterness dates back to a childhood event at a similar landfill. She recalls how their mother made her drop what she was carrying to carry a globe Midge found because Midge was wearing a precious white dress. Clearly, Alice has been struggling to escape from Midge’s domineering shadow ever since.
Simple and straightforward, Anezka Sebek’s “Landfill” bears a striking resemblance to a one act play. It’s a quirky little film, if only because even though it was basically twenty minutes of these two yelling and screaming at each before making up, those twenty minutes went by surprisingly fast. I guess that’s a good thing. Nipkow’s Alice veers a little too close to dingy at times and Dunham portrays Midge as an unrelentingly spoiled brat. Still, it works in the end, if only because it’s cathartic watching them fight it out like only sisters really can.
