[img]7|left|||no_popup[/img] Like that other quirky out-of-left-field indie hit with “Sunshine” in its title, “Sunshine Cleaning” is a film haunted by the spectre of suicide. A key difference is that where Steve Carell’s Proust scholar survives the attempt and is but one facet of his family’s loss of life direction, the past-tense suicide in “Sunshine Cleaning” is a scarring and defining event. But neither film is specifically preoccupied with the pathology of suicide, in the way “Revolutionary Road” or “The Hours” might be, although there are enough similarities between the two films to view “Sunshine Cleaning” as a thematic follow-up and extension of “Little Miss Sunshine.” Shared producers and Alan Arkin’s near-typecast part as a loveable but gruff father-figure are only the most obvious.

The plot’s kernel involves a woman who finds herself stripped of her high school cheerleader popularity and resigned to eking out a living cleaning people’s homes. Her furtive affair with Mac, once her high school sweetheart but now married to another woman, is as much a cage as anything else in her life, although Mac does offer a strange escape. Overhearing a crime scene cleanup crew at the scene of a suicide, he suggests that she get into (profitable) business for herself – cleaning up after the dead. Dragging her reluctant sister, your typical barely-responsible, morose slacker poignantly played on the down-beat by Emily Blunt, into the business, a quirky idea soon takes off.

Amy Adams Is Extraordinary

But this isn’t an epic, capitalistic wet dream filled with choking moments and sentiment, like Will Smith’s “The Pursuit of Happyness” – a film that is likeable on its own terms but, given the test of time and Wall Street’s unpopularity, a bit passé. Like “Little Miss Sunshine,” “Sunshine Cleaning” is about people adrift in their own lives and struggling to find the elusive spark that leads to personal fulfillment – people who don’t get lucky opportunities, or have any great quality to give them a leg up over everyone else. As Rose Lorkowski, Amy Adams brings an immense watchability – her facial expressions, from torn-up to optimistic, are magnificent – and everywoman quality struggles that are very human in their scope. Some of the film's best moments occur through the understated chemistry between her and Clifton Collins Jr., whose role as a friendly, helpful one-armed janitorial supply store owner.

When the script is willing to temper what, in other films, would be dismissed as melodramatic interference, “Sunshine Cleaning” has a raw spirit that appeals. Rose’s transition to business owner doesn’t go smoothly. And unlike those fluffy films where customers magically appear out of thin air and mistakes are glossed over or ignored, the endeavour doesn’t lead where it might be expected. Unfortunately, the end isn’t quite so restrained, as if director Christine Jeff and screenwriter Megan Holley suddenly remembered that the film, as a comedy, is conceptually obligated to end lightly. It’s not the high note that shrieks so much as the groaning of a script that doesn’t quite accomplish the work needed to justify its artistic choices, let alone the happy ending. To its credit, speaking of obligations, “Sunshine Cleaning” doesn’t overplay its hand too often and keeps instead to the artistic tradition of none-too-schmaltzy open-endedness. It may strain a bit, but the film is ultimately endearing.

Entertainment Value: ** (out of two)
Technical Quality: ** (out of two

Sunshine Cleaning. Written by Megan Holly. Directed by Christine Jeffs. Starring Amy Adams, Emily Blunt, Alan Akin and Clifton Collins Jr. 102 minutes. Rated R (for disturbing images, sexuality, and drug use.)

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