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Where do the popular high school hotties in rural America
go after prom night is over? According to the hick flick
Sunshine Cleaning, unless you marry into material security,
it's the proverbial out to pasture for women without prospects.
Which in this case is minimum wage drudgery. Or, if economic
desperation gives rise to a brainchild master plan, in a
pinch there's the euphemistically named endeavor of bio-hazard
disposal, otherwise known as crime scene and trauma cleaning
mop-up duty.***
Directed by Christine Jeffs and written by Megan Holly,
two women with an alternately zany and heartbreaking cinematic
master plan of their own, Sunshine Cleaning stars Amy Adams
as Rose and Emily Blunt as younger goth sister Norah, two
outer Albuquerque underachiever sisters struggling to make
ends meet by house cleaning and waitressing respectively.
Rose is also juggling a dead end affair with a very married
cop (Steve Zahn) and life as a single m om with an adventurous
young son Oscar (Jason Spevack), who keeps getting tossed
out of public school for odd behavior like licking pencil
sharpeners and his teacher's leg.***
Determined to come up with the money somehow to enroll
Oscar in private school where there may be more compassion
for his eccentric behavior, Rose embarks on a vocational
scheme in the grueling but relatively well paying crime
scene cleanup field of work, after being tipped off to the
enterprise by her law enforcement lover. And though lacking
the necessary insurance or license to practice human waste
disposal, Rose drags along a far from enthused Norah as
they make house calls scrubbing blood from the premises
of recently departed suicides and murder victims, while
engaging in awkward attempts at comforting the survivor
relatives.***
And in the interim while raising the cash for private
school, Rose takes along a truant Oscar in tow, or drops
him off for some bizarre quality time with his kooky grandfather
(Alan Arkin), another family member with seeming DNA designed
for the pursuit of outlandish grand plans in life. But when
grandpa isn't available, there's the one armed shy loner
(Clifton Collins Jr.) who runs the local 'decomp disposal'
supply goods store. Meanwhile, Norah gets into a little
beyond the call of duty girl bonding over an edible necklace,
with a suicide's surviving relative, while both sisters
spend their late night down time channel surfing, in search
of the only two lines their deceased failed actre ss mom
ever uttered in a movie. In which no surprise, she played
a minimum wage diner waitress. Though the story is at times
emotionally unconvincing in concept, the wacky cast chemistry
is never less than superb, while lending class conflict
spirit and spunk to that growing body of work that may eventually
come to be known as economic crisis cinema.
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