Review of
Sunshine Cleaning
15 Certificate (91mins)

directed by Christine Jeffs
Starring Amy Adams, Emily Blunt, Alan Arkin, Jason Spevack and Steve Zahn
at the Dukes in Lancaster - Friday 7th August

A film brought to us by the producers of Little Miss Sunshine and that is where the similarity ends and the oxymoron takes hold. With gentle light and infrequent black humour – it is not quite what the label says.

I think you expect grapes and get cherries!

Not surprising really as suicide is rarely funny or is it? One of my favourite lines comes at the beginning of the film; asking to look at a gun in the local sports shop a customer blows himself away. The accompanying fallout instigates the comment 'He's reached Fishing' from an observant member of staff in the distance.

This is not to trivialise the message of the film, which centres round the lives of two sisters Rose and Norah.
They start a cleaning business to plug a lucrative gap in this 'exclusive' market.

I mean, who does clean up after a suicide, forensics having gone home for tea?
I want to know!
The sisters are played beautifully and disarmingly by Amy Adams and Emily Blunt. What event has shaped the sisters' lives to make them yearn to see their mother on the television and to go 'trestling' (standing immediately under a wooden bridge while a train goes over)? As the oxymoron lets go the viewer gets a glimpse of what suicide means to those left behind.
The script was written by Megan Holley.

Well worth a watch – just go with an open mind.

Elizabeth Nicholson
© 14/8/09