Reviewed by Lamar Kukuk
5/11/09
“We've all been raised on television to
believe that one day we'd all be millionaires and movie Gods and rock stars.
But we won't.”
-Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt), Fight Club
In fact, statistically speaking,
just about no one will. The great majority of human lives rise or
fall on achievements that wouldn't cause E! Entertainment Television to
bat an eye, but on those rare occasions when the working poor appear in
the movies, it's pretty much exclusively so they can either die in misery
or become millionaires. That's the novelty of Sunshine Cleaning,
Christine Jeffs' quirky little dramedy about a family trying to find that
elusive something that will allow them to wake up in the morning looking
forward to the day to come. Amy Adams and Emily Blunt each add another
great performance to their sparkling resumes and we learn a whole lot about
the wonderful world of crime scene clean-up. The movie at times forgets
how skillfully realistic it's been in favor of overreaching Sundance-friendly
treacle, but to paraphrase the poster, indie dramedies can be a messy business.
Rose Lorkowski (Amy Adams)
is just getting by, working as a maid for a company that hires them out.
She had a son, Oscar (Jason Spevack), with her high school boyfriend Mac
(Steve Zahn), but while he's still happy to meet her at motels for one
night stands, he opted to marry someone else. Oscar's an odd little
kid, and his need to compulsively lick people and things inspires his school
to give Rose an ultimatum: put him on medication or send him to a
private school she can't afford. Mac may not be willing to help out
financially, but he does have an idea: he's a cop, and he's seen
first hand how much money there is in cleaning up crime scenes (disposing
of the bio-hazards, etc.) after the investigation is complete. He
pulls a few strings, and just like that Rose has started her own company,
Sunshine Cleaning, pulling in her shiftless sister Norah (Emily Blunt)
as her reluctant partner while their get-rich-quick scheme-obsessed father
Joe (Alan Arkin) watches Oscar. They've got a lot to learn, and the
guy (Clifton Collins Jr.) they buy their supplies from tries to fill in
the gaps while Rose ducks her more professional competitors. The
cleaning service hits awfully close to home due to a childhood trauma the
sisters shared, and while Rose finds it comforting, Norah becomes obsessed
with tracking down the daughter (Mary Lynn Rajskub) of a friendless woman
whose trailer they emptied. The money is rolling in, but the Lorkowskis
have always found a way to fail and it's only a matter of time before it
happens again.
Amy Adams has rapidly become
one of my favorite actresses, and Sunshine Cleaning shows off her
skill in playing characters who project a fragile good cheer in the face
of despair. As the story begins, Rose is just kidding herself with
her Daily Affirmations taped to her bathroom mirror and dreams of taking
real estate classes: the reason her high school promise has gotten
away from her is because she's gotten so good at putting a happy spin on
the Lorkowski family tragedy that she's learned to settle for it.
But when the crime scene cleanup opportunity comes along, it connects with
her in a way she doesn't expect because it again allows her to clean up
other people's messes and put chaotic scenes back into order. Since
most of us will never really surmount the issues our childhoods leave us
with, the best we can hope for is to find a life that actually makes them
assets, and that's exactly what Rose does here. I liked the way that
Adams plays her embrace of this opportunity: Sunshine Cleaning
is not a fairy tale, and having a successful business doesn't make all
of Rose's problems go away. But it does make her happy enough, and
that's what really matters.
Blunt, meanwhile, has specialized
in playing flamboyant characters who just don't give a crap, and Norah
gives her a chance to put a new spin on that persona. Yes, she's
shiftless and her attitude gets her fired from any job she tries, but in
fact this woman cares too deeply about anything she comes into contact
with. Her scenes with Rajskub (who's excellent as well) are really
fascinating. Norah has sought her out to give her pictures she found
in her mother's trailer, but when the moment comes, she can't pull the
trigger. Instead, she ends up leading her on into a tentative “friendship”
that comes off as a flirtation when she's really just waiting for the right
moment to hand over that packet. The farther it goes, the more it
can't possibly end well, but Blunt does a wonderful job of making us despair
Norah's inability to do anything right rather than curse it. As the
third surviving Lorkowski, Arkin's got more of a stock Alan Arkin Indie
Role, but he gives it his usual panache to keep the plates spinning until
the character goes off in some more original directions in the final scenes
(these days, when a character his age is even IN the final scenes, that
counts as original).
Megan Holley's screenplay
sets up an intriguing family dynamic and keeps that nasty childhood secret
effectively (just why are the girls so fascinated with a certain kind of
scene on TV from the opening moments?), and I really did like the way the
crime scene cleanup business is more than just a wacky indie hook.
But she does get carried away with the sentiment, and a running motif where
characters “talk” to the dead through a CB radio because a used car salesman
said it “sends messages to Heaven” is eye-rollingly awful. And I
couldn't quite figure out what Collins Jr.'s character was doing here:
if we're to consider him Rose's “love interest”, he's such a chaste one
that even the Hayes Code Censorship Office would probably have considered
it too mild.
Jeffs directs with a keen
eye for the fragile routine of a dysfunctional family and gets strong performances
across the board. Sunshine Cleaning isn't perfect, but it
does deliver a look into a world we rarely see in the movies and a whole
lot of good tips for the proper disposal of bio-hazards. For all
the good career advice people can get, none is better than “never stop
trying to get paid for doing something you actually like.” Rose Lorkowski
likes cleaning up crime scenes. May we all be so lucky. |
