Fridae

A must-watch especially for lesbian viewers, Sunshine Cleaning is a beautiful indie movie about finding the meaning of life when you’re surrounded by death.

Amy Adams and Emily Blunt play sisters who are, well, losers. Amy was a former school cheerleader and popular It-girl who is now in her thirties, working in lousy jobs, and struggling to raise a young boy on her own. Meanwhile, Emily is a rebellious hard-partying punk who keeps losing her job and has to live with their cantankerous father (Alan Arkin).

Desperate to make more money, Amy considers taking on the job of cleaning up crime scenes. It pays a heck of a lot more than cleaning houses because few people want to wash up after dead people. She ropes in her jobless younger sister, and the two start work on cleaning blood-drenched, foul-smelling houses. Slowly and unexpectedly, the sisters find renewed hope for their dysfunctional lives

Written by Megan Holley and directed by Christine Jeffs, Sunshine Cleaning may be classified as a chick flick by some. But its a chick flick with more heart, soul and intelligence than most. Both Amy and Emily are talented actresses who bring out the comedy and poignancy of the script in surprising ways. The scene where the sisters come to terms to their mother’s death is one of the most heartbreaking scenes in recent memory.

For lesbian viewers, there is also the added treat of a lesbian subplot between Emily and a lonely woman (Mary Lynn Rajskub) whose mother’s home Emily cleaned.

Though the film errs somewhat on being unfairly anti-men, Sunshine Cleaning is still a lovely picture that deserves to be seen by all.