Sunshine Cleaning

Well, it’s taken us till April for me to find the first release of 2009 that I almost wholeheartedly love: Christine Jeffs’ Sunshine Cleaning. I suspect it will find a spot on my 10 best by the end of the year. At the same time, I’m mindful of the fact that I might be influenced by how lackluster the year has been so far, and that the other movies I saw this week were Fast & Furious and C Me Dance. Diminished expectations may have played a part, too, because the film has been branded in some quarters as a kind of cash in on Little Miss Sunshine (2006), owing to shared producers, Alan Arkin and the word “sunshine” in the title. (In all honesty, if it weren’t for Alan Arkin, Sunshine Cleaning would have reminded me about as much of Little Miss Sunshine as Danny Boyle’s Sunshine (2007) did.) I say all this because I’m aware that my view may be a little skewed by circumstances, though I don’t think so.

Anyone who’s seen the trailer knows that Sunshine Cleaning tells the story of Rose Lorkowski (Amy Adams), a young woman to whom life hasn’t been especially kind. She’s a single mother with a dead-end cleaning job and is stuck in a relationship with her now-married high-school flame, Mac (Steve Zahn). It’s police detective Mac who comes up with the idea that Rose could make a lot of money cleaning up crime scenes—a vocation she buffaloes her sister, Norah (Emily Blunt), into undertaking with her. The trailer (which does the movie a great disservice) plays up the quirky black-comedy aspect of the concept and the existence of Alan Arkin as the girls’ eccentric father. It offers no clue about the film’s much deeper dramatic qualities, its sense of heartaching longing, or in fact two pretty major characters, who do much to add to the film’s resonance. There is so much more here than the trailer even suggests.

Rose and Norah are at the center of the film, but in many ways this is an ensemble effort—and one where the characters frequently don’t conform to expectation. The business of cleaning up after murders, suicides or even just deaths that have taken rather too long to discover, however, is mostly the device that drives the story. It isn’t in itself the story. Rather, the film is about the relationship of the two sisters, Rose’s son, Oscar (Jason Spevack, Hollywoodland), and the boy’s grandfather. Much has to do with Rose’s sense of responsibility toward her younger, unmotivated, slightly wild, pot-smoking sister—a thoroughly irresponsible character, who, nonetheless, serves as Oscar’s babysitter whenever Rose has a tryst with Mac. The reason for Rose’s sense of responsibility for Norah isn’t revealed until late in the film. In fact, the film’s structure is such that most motivations are slowly doled out. In some cases—much as in real life—character motives are never more than hinted at.

A great deal of the film is grounded in the tragedy of people who simply cannot or will not let go. A good deal of this centers on Rose, who not only can’t let go of a bad relationship, but is firmly stuck in a high-school mind-set—something that comes to the fore in an encounter with an upscale former classmate (TV actress Judith Jones) and results in an epiphany at the classmate’s baby shower. More, Rose is stuck in surrogate-mother mode with Norah—a role she inherited upon the death of their mother. A similar dynamic colors Norah’s life, since she’s used to being the screwup, who’s reliant on her big sister—something that changes in a slightly contrived, yet believable, development when she becomes obsessed with returning some photos she finds while at one of their jobs to the victim’s estranged daughter, Lynn (Mary Lynn Rajskub, Little Miss Sunshine).

It’s difficult to really address all the issues raised in the film without saying too much. I will note that it’s particularly essential to pay attention to Norah’s interactions with Lynn, and to Rose’s with the friendly, one-armed janitorial supply salesman, Winston (Clifton Collins Jr., The Rules of Attraction). And it wouldn’t hurt to watch Alan Arkin’s Joe for more than addled comedy. All of the performances are really first-rate and help bring these characters to believable life. And it should be noted that Emily Blunt comes very close to stealing the movie from Amy Adams—as unthinkable as that sounds.

Christine Jeff’s direction perhaps relies just a little too much on handheld (though not shaky-cam) camerawork, but she obviously created the right atmosphere for the actors. Moreover, she does evidence a strong sense of style. The set piece where Norah takes Lynn “trestling”—hanging beneath a train trestle at night while the train goes overhead—is as assured a piece of filmmaking as anything I’ve seen this year. The overall result is a wonderful little movie with a big emotional resonance that deserves your attention. Rated R for language, disturbing images, some sexuality and drug use.