332. The Gleaners and I (Les glaneurs et la glaneuse); movie review

THE GLEANERS AND I (LES GLANEURS ET LA GLANEUSE)
Cert U
78 mins
BBFC advice: Contains no material likely to harm or offend

I wonder whether one of the inspirations for people voting Brexit was that they were keen to see the return of outsize veg or ones shaped like body parts.
The fun went out of visits to the greengrocer's when we could no longer buy potatoes which looked like hearts or carrots which had similarities to genitalia.
Nowadays, such veg are not allowed on supermarket shelves because of strict rules so they are chucked away.
More precisely, they are dumped in fields where gleaners collect them by the tonne (or ton if you are an imperial Brit).
Yes, if you know where to look you can glean a harvest of unwanted crops.
Agnès Varda has long been intrigued by the type of people who collect the food which others leave behind and their reasons for doing so.
The impression from this film is that poverty plays a key part. The richer the person, the more wasteful they are.
However, there are always exceptions to the rule as an acclaimed chef proves when he says he gleans for the love of the act and because generations of his family have.
Varda clearly has an admiration for the gleaners who she sees as rightfully using the leftovers of the wasteful.
She also draws parallels with the past when they were seen not as scroungers but as legitimate business people.
And she examines the sad modern-day world when urban gleaning takes the form of the hungry looking through bins (I saw this happen more than once on our recent road trip in the United States) or even picking up material items from the sides of streets.
And she sees herself as a gleaner - a collector of people's stories.
It is a documentary which really does offer food for thought - in more ways than one.

Reasons to watch: Offers a rare insight to those who make best use of wasted food
Reasons to avoid: Diluted by its arty tangents

Laughs: None
Jumps: None
Nudity: None
Overall rating: 7.5/10

Director quote - Agnès Varda: "I felt I owed them something, but I also felt you cannot make a documentary and then say they go out of your life. It’s like being a collector of butterflies: you put them in a frame."

The big question - Why aren't we told where perfectly good food is dumped?

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