Sunshine Cleaning is a good film, but it's not as funny or as heart-warming as the link to Little Miss that the DVD jacket would suggest. The movie nominally involves the wonderful Amy Adams and Emily Blunt's sisters and the crime scene clean-up business they set up, although in reality the film is much more about the sisters' relationships with each other, Amy Adams' son, their father (Alan Arkin), and the memory of their deceased mother. Plus a flirtation with a one-armed, Airfix building cleaning store owner, and a possible lesbian-liaison with the daughter of a crime scene victim.
While there are moments of mirth, there's more emotional involvement and melancholy than I expected, but this is not to the film's detriment. I didn't feel there was actually enough time spent on the crime scene clean up, although that meant there was more time to explore the character's personal relationships. The film has something to say about death, and losing loved ones, yet it never feels pretentious. Amy Adams and Emily Blunt make excellent sisters and they're both such great, lovable actresses they really draw you in to every scene. To call Sunshine Cleaning uplifting, as one of the reviews on the DVD box does, is as misleading as calling Slumdog Millionaire a feel-good film. Both movies are satisfying and have uplifting moments, but Sunshine Cleaning in particular ends on a bit of a downer. Things work out for one sister, but the other is left on her own. The conclusion feels more realistic than other Hollywood endings (something I remember noting about Up in the Air) and I think it is this realism and the hesitancy to tie up all plot threads (an expected relationship doesn't come to fruition; the sisters are further apart rather than closer together) that makes the movie feel satisfying, but not uplifting.
Oh, and on a side note: The DVD featurette featuring 2 real life female crime scene cleaners is really interesting!
No comments:
Post a Comment