'Sunshine Cleaning' has many premises to be a different kind of film. The story is quite unusual including a mix of black humor and family comedy, of childhood trauma and post college social comment, or next door and weird characters in a beautiful and typical American surrounding on the fringe of the desert, which can be as boring as it gets or as uneasy as you cannot take it. The re-use of the 'sunshine' brand by the producer of 'Ms. Sunshine' is also a nice idea, hinting to a cycle of a 'slightly nonfunctional families in slightly nonfunctional America' movies. Promising.
Yet, it was me who was slightly disappointed. The mix works only at certain moments, but not as a whole. It may be the lack of courage of director Christine Jeffs who having dared in previous endeavors especially in 'Sylvia' but not reached the success that she may have expected is now trying a much more beaten path. It's a pity, as the material she worked from was worth a more courageous approach. What we get is a film that avoids shocking, with none of several promising threads being investigated in depth, where the strong light of the American South-West is too warm and friendly, and where good actresses like Amy Adams and Emily Blunt are told to act nicely failing to consume the promise of a killing black comedy female couple, something we have not seen for ages on screen if ever. The balance of feel-good vs. feel-bad lends too much on the conventional feel-good side.
If it dared 'Sunshine Cleaning' could have been a much better film.
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