Sunshine Cleaning

By Lucia Santiago Dantes
El Kiosko Magazine
www.elkioskomagazine.com

  Sunshine cleaning is about Rose (Amy Adams) a young single mother who once was a popular cheerleader, and girlfriend of the football player at her high school. Now, years after school, she works as a maid to provide for her seven years old son, Oscar.

  After receiving a notice she needs to medicate Oscar to control his weird behavior at school, Rose is desperate to increase her income in order to send Oscar to a private school.

  Mac (Steve Zahn) is her old high school boyfriend; now a detective, married, with children, but still in a relationship with Rose, at some point we ask ourselves why she is still with him? But at some point she asks herself the same question, another downer in Rose life. Mac tips her into a very lucrative but not so pleasant business: cleaning the mess after a police crime investigation and derivates.

  Rose sees the opportunity for a better future and the immediate solution to her problems. So, Rose creates Sunshine Cleaning with the help of her slacker and very irresponsible sister Norah (Emily Blunt).

  After some funny and disgusting moments, the sisters realize they’re clueless about the cleaning industry, and that’s when we meet Winston (Cliffton Collins Jr) a one armed guy who helps them to figure out the business.

  What I liked about Winston is that he plays the cool dude that somehow helps Rose to see her reality without really saying anything. In a way it’s like in real life, sometimes out of nowhere, someone shows up in our way and helps us clear out our mind.

  Although it is a good story, it has its flaws. Having several characters with different situations to deal, can mine a story. Some people will find difficult to understand some characters if they don’t think about the state the character is in. But if you think about it, it is exactly as in real life, how many times we see a nice girl with a good for nothing? Or vice versa? And how many times, even among our friends we see that kind of conformism? Norah’s attitude?… orChild behavior? more often than we would like to admit it. But in our real life, there’s no time to figure out everything, after all we’re only humans, and we’re not born with a psychology certificate under our arms. For me, what other people see as an error, it is indeed just part of real life.

The bright side of Sunshine Cleaning is the performance of Amy Adams and Emily Blunt.

If you crave for a realistic story and good acting, this is your kind of movie!