Sunshine Cleaning
Rated: R
Runtime: 1 hour, 42 minutes
Directed by: Christine Jeffs
Starring:
Amy Adams - Rose Lorkowski
Emily Blunt - Norah
Alan Arkin - Joe
Jason Spevack - Oscar
Steve Zahn - Mac
Mary Lynn Rajskub - Lynn
Clifton Collins Jr. - Winston
Just when I'm starting to get bored of Amy Adams and thinking she's going to be relegated to delivering the role of "cute and naïve" women, I see her in Sunshine Cleaning where she gives a fantastic performance in an otherwise tame film that doesn't embrace its macabre activities of cleaning up crimes scenes and instead runs to what's safely indie (read: what's been approved by the Little Miss Sunshine/Napoleon Dynamite audience).
The scenes of crime-scene clean-up offer such a great visual dichotomy and it's totally missed. To have two actresses as lovely as Adams and Emily Blunt and not hit them with a little gore or a grotesque corpse or anything even slightly edgy just smacks of cowardice and compromise. I don't need the film to be some big, gruesome affair but if you're going to sell me on a film where I can find that humorous juxtaposition, don't chicken out on it.
Instead, Sunshine Cleaning opts to take these girls cleaning up messes and apply it to themes of trying to reclaim what's been lost before moving on. Rose (Adams) was a cheerleader in high school but she got pregnant and now she's a single mom who's carrying on affair with her old high-school boyfriend who's now a cop (Steve Zahn). Her sister Norah (Blunt) is the screw-up of the family and is still living at home. The film really doesn't know what to do with her and Blunt struggles valiantly to find a character that isn't there. On the sidelines is their father Joe (Alan Arkin) who has amusing get-rich-quick schemes that don't really pan out and it looks like in the twilight of his career Arkin may just have to keep playing "cool grandpa" because that's what it says on his Best Supporting Actor Oscar.
As I said at the beginning of this article, if there's a reason to see this film, it's Adams. We've seen the cute and naïve girl of Enchanted, Junebug and Doubt and now she finally shows us the woman who has to deal with the responsibilities of a mature adult. It's truly compelling to watch Adams as a woman who has to live a high school reunion every day and has to fight for the success her former friends have found through comfortable marriages. Rose is a strong, vulnerable, and thoughtful character and is one of Adams' best performances to date by showing us that she is an actress with a lot to offer. I just wish the rest of Sunshine Cleaning could offer its audience even half as much.
Words by
Matt Goldberg
3.19.09