REVIEW: Sunshine Cleaning (2009)
Sunshine Cleaning
Rated: R
Runtime: 91 minutes
Starring: Amy Adams, Emily Blunt
My rating: 4 stars
Your Rating (Click stars to rate):
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Whenever the film begins to fall off track, Amy Adams brings it back with effortless charm, grace and real emotion.
Sunshine Cleaning succeeds in avoiding the melodrama often associated with this genre. Instead, writer Megan Holley lets the situations breathe without telling us how we should feel about them.
Rose (Adams) is a single mother who's continuing her high school romance with Mac (Steve Zahn) despite he being married to another woman. I suspect Mac is the boy's father, although we never actually know.
Rose tries to make ends meet as a maid. Mac is a forensic investigator who tells her that she can make good money cleaning up crime scenes. Hard-up for cash, Rose employs her sister, Norah (Emily Blunt), and Sunshine Cleaning is born.
On the first job, Norah discovers photos dating from 1988-present of the deceased woman's daughter. She wants to find her and tell her about the mother's death. That's when Norah discovers how much the jobs affect her and the family issues from her past she still hasn't faced.
Rose takes a little longer, but when she does realize it, it's the most emotional scene in the film.
The crew is called on a suicide clean-up. They arrive and an elderly woman is sitting on the porch, waiting to hand over the keys to the house. Her husband has just shot himself. Rose sits next to the woman and a long, silent pause ensues.
Holley lets the scene speak for itself. It's a magical, visceral moment that is neither too dramatic, nor underwhelming. Credit Adams for capturing genuine emotion.
Predictably, as the movie progresses, each successive job brings out more of the personal turmoil each sister must confront. And predictably, they deal with it much differently.
Alan Arkin plays their father. He's living alone trying get-rich-quick schemes to get by. He's dealing with the family hardship in a calmer fashion, albeit still quite emotionally in a different way.
There are times when Sunshine Cleaning runs out of steam. Adams picks it back up.
I first saw Adams when she played the nurse/fiance in Catch Me If You Can. Yes, that really is her. Then I saw her in Junebug and continued to be impressed. She turned up again in small roles in Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby and Charlie Wilson's War. I can go on, but you all know her name now because of her Sister James in Doubt, which earned her an Oscar nomination.
So is that why you should go see this movie – because you missed Doubt and want to see Amy Adams? No.
You should see this movie because it shouldn't be as good as it is. How can that be? Because Adams brings importance to the movie few actresses could.
We fall in love with her smile, as we do in most of Adams's films. But in this, there's something behind the smile. There's heartache from failed dreams. There's total devotion to a son. And there's still a glimmer of hope in the possibilities of a better future. Rose masks it behind her smile. It makes us want her to be happy, and so we care passionately about her.
The film gets the audience involved through its characters, even though the overall premise isn't that promising.
Sunshine Cleaning is a true character film. There isn't really a bad guy or a good guy; there are only people. Every person is real, and the things they deal with are real and their emotions are real. We watch and care for them all, especially Rose and her son.
We can look past Sunshine Cleaning's predictability because the acting is so rich. From Arkin to Blunt and even Jason Spevak as Rose's son, Oscar, the performances are believable and true. This film will likely find a niche audience through DVDs, but it is definitely in the collection of great Amy Adams performances. Four stars.
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Where it's playing?
Canton/Potsdam: Click here for current listings.
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