sunshine cleaning

People dying is a fact of life. People cleaning up after people dying is also a fact of life. That's where Rose and Norah Lorkowski come in.

Rose (Amy Adams) is stuck working at a home cleaning service to support night classes in real estate. After their weekly tryst, Rose gets the idea to clean up crime scenes from Mac (Steve Zahn), a married policeman with whom she is having an affair. Rose, who struggles with raising her imaginative and troublemaking son Oscar (Jason Spevack), convinces her more alternative sister Norah (Emily Blunt) to start up their own biohazard removal and crime clean-up service.

"It's just like cleaning up a house, but there's blood there," she optimistically urges.

Along the way, Rose finds comfort and guidance in Winston (Clifton Collins Jr.) the one-armed cleaning supplies store manager while Norah befriends Lynn (Mary Lynn Rajskub) out of a sense of emotional duty. Both sisters must deal with a shared tragic past, a difficult feat in their hometown of Albuquerque which neither has ever left. To cope, they fall back upon their father Joe (Alan Arkin) who employs the same half-comic-relief-half-real-life-wisdom he did in that other Sunshine movie.

Director Christine Jeffs offers a mixed bag of light-hearted comedic moments and heartfelt-albeit a bit forced-life-altering episodes. Adams and Blunt bounce off each other remarkably well, bringing unique depth to their characters but remaining convincing as sisters. Collins superbly disappears into his role and Rajskub displays her usual Chloe-from-24 emotional awkwardness. Megan Holley's script realistically unravels and wraps back together tightly by the film's close, ultimately operating as a quaint and down-to-earth story about individuals finding deeper meaning in their professions.

Emotionally affecting and thematically taut, Sunshine Cleaning starts off a bit shaky but picks up speed, leaving you humbled and touched.