Sunshine Cleaning

We watched Sunshine Cleaning on FilmFlex this evening, one of those quirky indie films that balance humour and trauma in eccentric combinations, with a handful of eccentric characters thrown into the mix. The central metaphor was one of an occupation that seems to offer little potential for philosophy or romanticising: cleaning up domestic residencies after bloody crime scenes. The two sisters (played by Emily Blunt and Amy Adams) who set up business are desperate for money (Rose is a single mum) and a sense of purpose and are pretty horrifyingly amateur at first: they attend their first bloody house in casual jeans etc. 'Aren't they supposed to wear protective clothing?' I asked K-, having seen too many episodes of Silent Witness. It turns out they should indeed, and be certified to deal with bio-hazardous material and blood borne pathogens too.

This is all interesting in the field of research of course but where's the poetry in it? The sisters get professional, get a van, give their business the unlikely name of Sunshine Cleaning (you know it's not going to last). Older sister in particular starts to realise the resonance of the job – they are called in to any and every individual circumstance, but always a loss, a trauma; the sisters are able to if not make things right again, at least begin to make things better, and be a force for some sort of healing and closure from the raw wound of immediate personal trauma. 'In some small way, we help'. That's the essence of the offering, as Anglican mystic Evelyn Underhill once said in a novel about an artist, rather than a cleaner, but even so... There is also a persistent sense in this movie of bad being transmuted into good; not only in the physical transformation of the professional cleanup but also (uncomfortably) of other people's disaster providing work ('It's a growth industry')for the sisters, and in a subsidiary scene, Rose's seven year old son who has been called a 'bastard' is told that it will be his 'free ticket to cool' in the near future, taking the taunt and subverting it into empowerment.

Turns out that Rose and Nora need (to) help themselves, to come to terms with their mother's suicide when they were still children; and another level of resonance is to do with their opening the door and going in to allow light and mutual help onto their still traumatised psyches. Interestingly they have a sort of emotional show down in a public bathroom, as though borrowing the cleansing element of that room which is its major psychoanalytic/ dream symbolism. It's a Ladies room as well, just as cleaning is traditionally a woman's job: is this a woman's movie, about re establishing both severed maternal lineage and emotional independence? It's certainly not a conventional romance. The only decent love interest by the end of the film is a one-armed shop keeper, but he seems a lot more sympathetic than the two timing husband Rose is dallying with at the start. Not being a Hollywood blockbuster, a lot is allowed to be left without explicit resolution. Each character experiences some sort of shift or personal insight but none reach the end of their personal journeys; like a short story, there is a change but not an overly heavy conclusion.

The central metaphor of the job does resurface at the end, after Norah has gone off on her road trip and their father steps up to support his other daughter's projects. They have a different company name and the strapline 'Cleaning Professionally Since 1963' on the newly painted van. 'It's a business lie,' says the father. 'It reassures people.' Well indeed. We like continuity, it shores us up against crisis; but crisis is often the real opportunity for both bad and good.